
Class 
Book- 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



A DEAD ISSUE 



AND THE 



LIVE ONE 



BY 

B. F. VAN METER, Sr. 

LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY 



Printed by 
THE BRADLEY & GILBERT CO. 

INCORPORATED 

Louisville, Kentucky 

1913 






FEB II 1914 



©CI.A:<G19;j6 



"We should gather inspiration from this world in which we live, 
And discern among its beauties all the meaning God would give. 
What though men of deepest learning, versed in sciences and art 
Do proclaim a new religion in which Jesus has no part? 
Human nature, striving, longing, yearning, feeling after God, 
Finds its only path of safety where those ancient feet have trod." 



PREFACE. 

It would be an all-sufficient reason for writing this book, to 
draw the attention of the rising generation and of those who may 
follow to the Truth; and thus counteract the erroneous, false, and 
harmful impressions which are continually being made by school 
teachers and others upon the rising generation. The twaddle and 
silly sentiment which is thus used as argument against the institu- 
tion of slavery could as well, or better, be used to oppose the 
slaughter of beasts or animals, birds and fishes, for the sustenance 
of man, and the burdensome labor imposed upon horses and all 
domestic animals. God, the Almighty and infinitely wise Creator of 
all things, has given man no more authority or right in His Holy 
word and Testament for these last named things than he has to pos- 
sess and use slaves ; and His infinite wisdom is as well displayed in 
His provision for the institution of slavery as for food and raiment 
or the institution of marriage and all the provisions which He made 
for the use and benefit of the human beings which He created as 
the crowning act of His creation of this world, that they should have 
dominion and control over it and all that is on it and in it. We 
are confident that we find abundant testimony in God's Word as 
contained in the Old and New Testaments to convince all who ac- 
cept this book as inspired and true, that "Bible Slavery" was as 
Divinely instituted as any of the other institutions and precepts set 
forth in that holy and inspired Word, and besides this and in con- 
nection with it, furnish a subject of sufficient magnitude and im- 
portance to enlist the most serious and earnest thought, even of 
the greatest living Statesmen, and all who have an earnest desire for 
the welfare of mankind. 

NOTE — I am indebted to a pamphlet published from two or 
three lectures delivered by Rev. Stuart Robinson, D. D., of Louis- 
ville, Ky,, while sojourning in Canada in 1862-3, and there perhaps 
more from necessity than choice while the abominable old unpleas- 
antness was raging furiously in this country. He was one of the 
most learned and distinguished divines then living. I have drawn 
on this pamphlet freely for scripture testimony which he had al- 
ready collected in proof of the sentiments and views which I enter- 
tain and have expressed in this book. 



A DEAD ISSUE. 



We may say that the dead have an inalienable right to a cor- 
rect epitaph; Justice and Truth demand this, and we believe that 
no one at this late day will deny that African slavery as it existed 
in America fifty years ago is a dead issue and therefore entitled to 
a true and correct history as much for the benefit of future genera- 
tions as in justice to the slave-owners who will soon have all gone 
the way of this subject proposed for discussion. 

To begin with, I do not propose to discuss this subject with 
any person who is not willing to admit that the Bible as contained in 
the Old and New Testament is the inspired Word of God and there- 
fore true, wise, and righteous ; then whatever in regard to this sub- 
ject can be made to accord with the inspired Word of God should be 
accepted as true and correct, whether it accords with the prejudice 
passions, and predilections of the reader or not. 

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" and all such writings have long since 
served their purpose and should pass to their reward and receive 
their just deserts, while history should be just, true, frank and 
honest. To make anything to stand the test and storms of time a 
firm foundation is needed and "How firm a foundation for saints of 
the Lord" can be found by searching in God's Holy Word ; then let 
us find what is the "thus saith the Lord" in regard to this subject 
and abide by that, whatever it may be. To do this, if need be, we 
can go back to the days of Noah, soon after he came out of the Ark 
and learn what this prophet of God said in Genesis. First, let us 
see what is said of Noah in the 6 : 9, 10. "Noah was a just man, and 
perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. And Noah 
begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth." Then further on (9:22) 
"And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, 
and told his two brothers without." And then the 24th verse: 
"And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son 
had done unto him. And he said of Canaan, 'a servant of servants 
shall he be unto his brethren.' " 26th : "And he said, 'Blessed be 
the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.'" 27th 
verse : "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents 
of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant." 

Now, here in the prophesy of Noah, we see that it was the pur- 
pose of God revealed at the very origin of the present race of men 



that one portion of the race should be doomed to servitude ; and that 
portion, as we shall see further on, are from those of heathenish de- 
gradation and devil-worship. 

What is claimed from Noah's prophesy is that this purpose of 
God revealed at the very origin of the present human race furnishes 
a clue to the interpretation of the subsequent revelations of His will 
both in His Word and in the history of His providence as revealed 
in His Holy Word. And then in Genesis 12: 16 we find these 
words : "And he (Pharoah) entreated Abram well for her (Sarah's) 
sake, and he (Abram) had sheep and oxen, and he-asses, and m.en- 
servants, and maid-servants, and she-asses, and camels." So this 
Abraham, a large slave-owner, was chosen by Jehovah for the earth- 
ly head of his Church, and God made a covenant with this slave- 
owner. In the 20: 14, "Abimeleck took sheep and oxen, and men- 
servants, and women-servants and gave them unto Abraham." We 
find in the 14: 14: "And when Abraham heard that his brother 
was taken captive he armed his trained servants born in his own 
house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan." 
Then again read in the 24: 34, 35: "And he said, I am Abraham's 
servant, and the Lord hath blessed my master greatly and he has 
become great, and He hath given him flocks and herds and silver 
and gold, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and camels, and 
asses." And if you will read all of this chapter you can but be 
convinced, if you are not already, that Abraham, this greatly favor- 
ed man of God, was a large slave-owner. It is just as true of Job, 
as we see from Job 1 : 15, 16, 17. "And the Sabeans fell upon them 
and took them away; yea they have slain the servants with the edge 
of the sword and I only am escaped alone to tell thee" While he 
was yet speaking there came also another and said, "the fire of God is 
fallen from Heaven and hath burned up the sheep and servants and 
consumed them, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee." While yet 
speaking there came another also, and said, "The Chaldeans made 
out three bands and fell upon the camels and have carried them away, 
yea, and slain the servants with the edge of his sword, and I only 
am escaped alone to tell thee." And then when Job was in the depths 
of his afflictions, see the 31: 13: "If I did despise the cause of my 
man-servant or maid-servant when they contended with me." With- 
out producing any further testimony there can be no more doubt of 
Job's having been an extensive slave-owner than there is of Abra- 
ham ; and after Job's affliction when he returned again to prosperity 
and affluence he owned more slaves than he had owned before, as 
see 42: 10. "And the Lord turned the captivity of Job when he 



prayed for his friends ; also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he 
had before." 

But to return to Abraham, when the fullness of time has come 
and by the Divine legation of Moses, this family of Abraham is to 
be organized fully as a visible Church and also as a Nation, to whom 
has been assigned in the Abrahamic Covenant, the Land of Canaan 
as an inheritance; another Covenant of redemption with its sacra- 
mental seal as the former. The Passover ordinance is entered into 
with a Church composed of masters with their slaves in the land of 
Egypt as, see Ex. 12: 43, 41, 45. That such v/ere the constituent 
elements of the Church at this time is mainfest from the terms of 
the law. — "This is the ordinance of the passover; There shall no 
stranger eat thereof, a foreigner and a hired servant shall not eat 
thereof, but everj man's servant that is bought for monei;, when 
thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof." This Holy 
ordinance is given to the Church as a Church through its recog- 
nized leaders, the elders. 

Thus we find that the relation of master and slave was sanc- 
tioned in the Church of God as such, and not merely as a civil 
institution, even before the law given by Moses ; and this is certainly 
very strong testimony to begin with against all theories of the sin- 
fulness of slavery., When the Church of God, prepared with great 
solemnity by a council of its elders, stood before Mount Sinai to 
hear directly the very voice of her Lord and heard utter the great 
Covenant of the law, two of the precepts of the law recognized the 
propriety of the relation of master and slave within the Church 
itself. In the fourth commandment masters are required to see to it 
that their slaves shall keep holy the Sabbath as well as themselves 
and children. In the tenth commandment, forbidding even unlaw- 
ful desires of another's property, slaves are enumerated among the 
representative articles of property v/hich men shall not covet, thus, 
"Nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, 
nor anything that is thy neighbor's," here recognizing slaves as 
legitimately the property of the master, as much so as his money or 
any of his possessions; and these ten commandments were written 
by the finger of Almighty God upon tables of stone and given as a 
foundation for the Mosaic Law. Who dare say to the Almighty, 
"Why, or what, doest Thou?" If it seems that unnecessary care 
has been taken to establish this conclusion we have only to reflect on 
the important bearing it must have on the interpretation of the civil 
code of Moses and its no less important bearing upon the interpre- 
tation of the New Testament teaching concerning slavery. 

9 



Moses found perpetual slavery already established among the 
Hebrews, just as certainly as the Statesmen who framed the Con- 
stitution of Virginia and South Carolina after the American Revolu- 
tion found slavery already established among the people of those 
States, and it is scarcely conceivable how language could more ex- 
plicitly set forth the idea of permanent servitude as a part of the 
social system in the Hebrew Commonwealth, and remember these 
were God's chosen people. "Both thy bondmen and bondmaids 
shall be of the heathen — of them shall ye buy bondmen and bond- 
maids, and they shall be i^our possession, and ye shall take them 
as an inheritance for your children after you to inherit them for 
a possession." 

Now, if you will compare the old slave codes of the former slave 
States of this Union you will find that the fundamental principles 
of the two are almost identical. But in some material points the 
slave cede of the American Southern States were more restrictive 
of the principles of slavery and the power of the master than the 
Mosaic code, the Roman code of Justinian, which develops the law 
of slavery as it existed at the time that Christ was on earth and of 
the apostles, and after that time. 

The Mosaic code protected the slave as a person just as the 
codes of all the Southern States did. The wilful murder of a slave 
under both the ancient and the modern codes was punished just as 
any other murder (See Lev. 24: 17.) "He that killeth any man shall 
surely be put to death," and (See Ex. 21 : 20) "If he (the slave) 
die under his hand he (the master) shall be punished." 

In order to protect the slave from cruel usage the Mosaic law 
provided that in case of more than ordinary punishment, amounting 
to cruelty, as the loss of an eye or a tooth from a blow of the mas- 
ter, the slave should go free. In the American as in the Justinian 
code it was provided in such case the slave should be taken from the 
cruel master and sold to one more merciful, and cruelty to a slave 
in America was an indictable offense. 

But to return again to the Mosaic law, the holding of slaves 
under the civil law was not deemed inconsistent with the highest 
of obligations of religion, and the holiness symbolized in the ritual 
law is manifest from the fact that when thirty-two thousand captive 
slaves were taken with other spoils from Midian (See Num. 31 : 28) 
Moses, by special command of Jehovah, took three hundred and 
fifty-two of the "persons" and turned them over to Eliezer the 
High Priest, as the Lords Tribute ; and then the further fact 
that the Priests were assumed to be slave-holders, as appears from 
Lev. 22: 10, 11, where it is said of the Priest's portion of the sacri- 

10 



ficial victim, "No stranger shall eat of the holy thing, a sojourner 
of the priest, or an hired servant shall not eat of the holy things 
but if the priest buy any soul with his money he shall eat of it, 
and he that is born in his house they shall eat of this meat." 

We have now briefly, but we think very conclusively, traced the 
existence of slavery under the Abrahamic Covenant, the Mosaic 
laws, and by Divine prophesy even before Abraham and the 
Mosaic constitution and laws, and then by God's command ("Get 
ye your slaves from among the heathen"). And by a little search 
into Roman and Grecian history we are easily convinced that at the 
time of Jesus Christ's personal ministry upon the earth, slavery ex- 
isted throughout the civilized world. Classical scholars compute 
the number of slaves in the Roman Empire alone, at that time, at 
sixty millions. The historian. Gibbon, after describing the condition 
and character of slavery in the Empire, speaks thus of their number 
(see "Gibbon Decline and Fall," Vol. 1, page 53), "After weighing 
with attention every circumstance which could influence the balance 
it seems probable that there existed in the time of the Emperor 
Claudius about one hundred and twenty millions of persons. The 
slaves were at least equal in number to the free inhabitants of Rome 
and besides these the Grecians held about the same proportion of 
slaves." We should bear in mind that quite a large majority of 
these slaves were of the degraded barbarian, which was in accord 
with the decrees of God; but a comparative few were Jews which 
had been captives in war and held as slaves contrary to the law of 
God. 

We find then when Christ's ministry on earth began He found 
slavery an institution fixed and established, as much so as that of 
marriage — husband and wife. He did modify the latter by a restric- 
tion to one wife at any one time, and a prohibition of divorce ; but 
made no change in regard to the institution of slavery, simply en- 
joining the duties of the slave to the master and of the master to the 
slave as such. Now, all believers in the Messiahship of Christ 
must admit that He did denounce sin and wickedness wherever and 
whenever He found it during His sojourn upon the earth. A case 
of slavery came before Him in one of the first of His recorded mir- 
acles. (See Matt. 8 : 6, and Luke 7:2.) A Roman Centurion appeals 
to Him to save the life of a highly valued slave. (Luke calls him 
Doulos.) Jesus healed the slave and pronounced the master a hero 
of faith beyond and yet met with in Israel. What an excellent op- 
portunity this would have been for our Lord and Master to rebuke 
the master and denounce slavery if it had been obnoxious to his 
views and principles ; on the contrary slavery is left throughout the 

11 



New Testament just as it was found in the Old Testament. Our 
Lord manifestly uses the language of a slave-holding people and 
alludes to the existence of such a relation as master and slave as a 
fact familiar to His hearers. Particularly in His parables does He 
borrow for the illustration of Divine Truth, as a thing perfectly 
familiar to the people, the doings and sayings of masters and slaves. 
For instance, the parable of the talents (Matt. 25: 14-30) in Vv^hich 
some of the peculiar features of Roman slavery are distinctly 
brought out. And others might be sighted, yet in no one of them 
does He utter a word of condemnation or disapproval of slavery 
as it then existed throughout the civilized world. And African 
slavery as it existed for hundreds of years before 1860, in the South- 
ern States of America, was in accord with the Roman system; and 
whenever different it was in favor of the slave as to amelioration 
and kindness and as to his elevation in the scale of civilization and 
religion. But it vv^as said by the fanatical Abolition philanthropists, 
for years before, and during and after that cruel, bloody, and utterly 
unnecessary Civil War, that though Jesus Christ pronounced no 
specific rebuke of the relation of master and siave yet He uttered 
the great law of Love, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart, etc., etc., and thy neighbor as thyself." It is curious 
enough how people with a Bible at hand could quote this as an ori- 
ginal saying of Jesus and intended as a "higher law" to supersede 
the ancient ethical law of the Church as revealed in the Old Testa- 
ment by Moses, or rather by Jehovah through Moses, and when it 
had been thrice repeated by Moses (See Deut. 6: 5, 10, 12,-30: 6). 
More than this, Jesus expressly tells them that the law and the 
Prophets teach this great truth, and this great law of God was 
promulgated first by Jehovah through Moses, his vicegerent, to 
God's own chosen people, a slave-owning people. And anyone who 
has ever owned slaves can know and realize that there is nothing 
at all incompatible in a slave-owner's complying v/ith this law any 
more than one who never owned a slave. If he is a loyal citizen 
of a Kingdom he can love his King as a King, his slave as his slave, 
and his neighbor as himself by the grace of God in his soul. 

This Dead Issue having been briefly discussed, but we hope 
clearly and distinctly set forth from the time that Noah left the Ark, 
through the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and the Jewish periods of God's 
people and the Church and the civilized world, we come now to 
the time of the reorganization of the Jewish Church as a Church of 
all nations through Christ's Apostles under the dispensation of the 
Holy Spirit. Beyond question or doubt wherever the Apostles 
went throughout the Roman Empire preaching the Gospel and 

12 



planting Christian churches they found slavery existing by the 
Roman laws, as has been already alluded to. And into this New 
Testament Church, just as into the Abrahamic and Mosaic Church, 
slave-holders and their slaves were admitted as its constituent ele- 
ments ; and this continued the same throughout the Southern States 
of this Union when I was a lad, and my father and my mother and 
my grandmother and the older brothers and sisters of the family 
were members of the same old Winchester, Ky., Church with the 
old carriage driver, Riddle, who had his place in the gallery with 
scores of other slaves, and after the sacramental elements had been 
dispensed on the lower floor they were taken without fail to the 
gallery to be received in the same manner by the faithful Christian 
slaves. 

In 1st Timothy, 6: 1, 2, we find these words: "Let as many 
servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all 
honor, that the name of God and His doctrine be not blasphemed 
and they that have believing masters let them not despise them be- 
cause they are brethren, but rather do them service, because they 
are faithful and beloved partakers of the benefit. These things 
teach and exhort." In 1st Cor. 7 : 20, 21 : "Let every man abide in 
the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a 
slave? Care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free use it 
rather." Now, all this inspired testimony above quoted is from 
Paul, the Apostle of Christ, more especially than the other eleven 
as a minister to the Gentiles which included the heathen. Again, 
take the entire epistle of Paul to Philemon, which is only one chap- 
ter containing twenty-five verses, and nearly all of it about a run- 
away slave named Onesimus whom Paul had captured and by the 
power of the Holy Spirit made a Christian man. See how he ad- 
dresses this slave-owner: "Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, unto 
Philemon, our dearly beloved and fellow laborer." And the entire 
epistle goes to show that the master as well as the slave was num- 
bered among Paul's converts and furthermore it is plain that Paul 
would have liked right well to have retained Onesimus as a body- 
servant, but knew he had no right to him and therefore sent him 
home to his master as a bearer of this epistle; and in the 10th and 
11th verses he says, "I beseech thee, for my son Onesimus whom I 
have begotten (converted) in my bonds, which in time past was 
to thee unprofitable (when he ran away), but now profitable to thee 
and to me." And this entire epistle fails to show the least antipathy 
on the part of this inspired Apostle to the institution of slavery ; on 
the contrary, in his pastoral epistles instructing young ministers in 
their duties, he enjoins upon them specifically to teach slaves to 

13 



be faithful and obedient to their masters. Thus in the instruction 
to Titus (See 2: 8-10) : "Exhort slaves to be obedient to their own 
masters and to please them well in all things, that they may adorn 
.the doctrine of God our Savior." See how very similar this is to 
the admonition given by inspiration to husbands and wives : "Hus- 
bands, love your wives, etc." ; and "wives, be obedient to your own 
husbands, etc." (as see 1st Peter 3: 1-7); and in other parts of the 
Bible, both Old and New Testament, we find the relation of hus- 
band and wife referred to and the institution of marriage in a very 
strikingly similar manner to that of the institution of slavery. 

Paul, in the Epistle addressed to the "Saints which are at 
Ephesus, and the faithful in Christ Jesus," after specific directions 
to husbands and wives, parents and children, precisely in the same 
manner addresses specific directions to masters and slaves without 
one word to distinguish this last named relation as ethically less 
proper than either of the others. 

So we see that we must seek elsewhere than in the Word of 
God, as contained in the Old and New Testament, for a just cause 
for the abolition of this institution of slavery. You may search the 
Scriptures from the first chapter of Genesis to the last line of Reve- 
lation, and by no fair and candid interpretation can you find any more 
condemnation of this institution of slavery than you can find of 
the institution of marriage and the family relation, or, any other 
of God's ordained or authorized institutions. 

The Queen of Sheba owned at least one slave in her day which 
I doubt if Solomon in all his glory had money enough to buy — the 
man riding in the chariot whom Philip was sent by Divine guidance 
to talk to on the subject of religion, and who was converted and 
baptized and sent on his way rejoicing. She had more need of that 
man than she had for gold or silver. There is no doubt but he was 
reliable, faithful, discrete, and in every respect trustworthy, and 
possessed extraordinary capacity. Then how could she spare him? 
But besides all this she loved him as her choicest slave and he 
loved her as his own dear mistress. Now this is something that 
the person who has never owned a slave knows nothing and has 
no just conception of, and never can have. 

An occurrence took place when I was quite a young man and 
soon after I was married. My father had died and left me executor 
of his estate, which comprised with other property some thirty or 
forty slaves of all ages and both sexes. But after my older brothers 
and sister had received the older and more experienced and com- 
petent servants for their portions — leaving not one who was com- 
petent to cut and fit clothing for the servants and such like things, 

14 



so that my wife was compelled to cut and fit clothing until she 
raised quite severe bumps and painful knots on her wrist and thumb 
from severe labor with the shears. By inquiring around the neigh- 
borhood I found and hired a young woman named Rachael, who be- 
longed to a young lady who was quite an intimate friend of my 
wife. Rachel proved to be an excellent cutter and fitter, and trust- 
worthy and valuable servant for any branch of housekeeping. My 
wife's father had given her two girls, one about seventeen and the 
other fourteen years old, and her uncle had made her a bridal pres- 
ent of a girl about fourteen years of age, and my father's estate 
contained a full supply of "green," gawky servants, but not one 
competent to fill the place of Rachael. Not long after I had hired 
this woman, my wife and I went over to visit her parents, when, of 
course, she displayed the bumps on her wrist and thumb and told 
of what a relief I had given her by hiring Rachael and what a treas- 
ure she was. When we started to return home her father went to 
his secretary drawer and brought out a roll of bills amounting to 
$1500 and said to me, "Take this and buy Amelia the best girl you 
can find to fill the place of the one you have hired. If this is not 
sufficient add a few hundred to it, but I think this should get a good 
one." My first thought was to try to buy Rachael, although I had 
very little hope of success. I lost very little time in seeing Miss 
Mag (her mistress). She was not quite of sufficient age to give 
a legal title to the girl, but I knew no title could be had without her 
consent; so as affably and tenderly as I could I broached my subject 
and finally let her know that I was really anxious to buy Rachael, 
when she very promptly replied, "Rachael is not for sale." "Oh," 
I said, "I knew you did not care to sell her, but I thought possibly 
if I promised to take good care of her as you can, you might consent 
to part with her, and I will give you $1500 for her." Then the tears of 
indignation began to show in her eyes, she turned and looked me full 
in the face, and replied : "You have not money enough to buy her. 
I would not sell her for money." Then I found that I had carried 
that matter as far as it would bear, so I said, "Well if I owned her 
I suppose I would talk just like you do," and quickly turned the 
conversation to something more pleasant. 

It is plainly seen from God's Word that it is His will that His 
people, those who know and worship Him, should enslave and own 
those who know not God and are living in heathenish degradation 
and barbarism as the African negroes were when they were brought 
to America and sold as slaves. They were running naked or with 
only breech-clouts on and living on the spontaneous production of 
the earth and, for an occasional extra meal, eating each other. But 

15 



snakes and lizards and wild fruits were their principal diet and they 
were utterly ignorant of God, their Creator, and living only a few 
degrees above the brute. It appears that any person who is not 
unreasonably prejudiced against slavery would realize at once that 
it was a great blessing to the negro to be brought from the jungles 
of Africa, and their degradation and devil-worship, to civilization 
and Christian influence in accordance with God's plan, to teach 
them the practical truth of Scripture which says, "By the sweat of 
thy face shalt thou eat thy bread." 

It is plain to be seen that the command of God to "Get ye your 
slaves from among the heathen" referred to that class of human 
beings who were in such a low state of degradation that they re- 
quired a process of elevation to capacitate them to comprehend the 
truth of God as their Creator and the Creator of all things, and on 
up to the Messiahship of Christ, There are many nations and 
people such as the Chinese, Coreans, and many tribes in India 
(and less than 100 years ago the Japanese), who are classed as 
heathen, but all of these had more or less some just conception of 
the immortality of the soul and a future life, and there is very little 
doubt that all of these as well as the American Indian descended 
from Japheth, and some of them a combination of Shem and Japheth. 
There is no doubt but the African negro descended from Ham. And 
there is very little doubt that the Esquimo descended from a combi- 
nation of Ham and Japheth and are originally from the lowest grade 
of humanity. And from these, by God's command, the slaves were 
to be taken. 

This was a plan of infinite wisdom to put these human beings 
through a practical process of uplifting and elevation which would 
result in their capacity to comprehend the truths of God's word 
and their final civilization in the most practical, if not the only 
practical way for any considerable success, and the former African 
slaves of America are a convincing proof of this statement. 

Whenever man undertakes to make improvement on God's 
plan about anpthing, if he would only take a second sober thought 
he should know that he is certain to make a botch of it, if he does 
not do more and make a disaster. He will make a great blunder if 
he does not commit a crime. One of Satan's successful strategies, 
ever since he prevailed on our first mother. Eve, to disregard God's 
law and undertake to improve upon His plans, has been to allure 
mankind to try to fix up something better than God's way ; and of 
course it has always been and always will be not only a failure but 
a crime, and nearly certainly a disaster. Our Lord and Master 
illustrated this Satanic strategy as He only could do, by his parable 

16 



of the tares, as (See Matt. 13 : 25) : "But while men slept an enemy 
came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way." In 
30th verse : "Let them grow together until the harvest." The devil 
never sowed tares in any political field which did more damage and 
inflicted a greater curse upon the human race than he did in regard 
to slavery. He planted a heavy crop in Scotland and England and 
Wales and in the Northern and Western States of this Union, while 
the Southern States who owned the slaves slept and basked in their 
imagined security, knowing that they had purchased their stock of 
slaves from English and Dutch and New England slave vessels. 
King George I, and Queen Ann, and perhaps other crov/ned heads, 
sanctioned and fostered this traffic in slaves and made profit in this 
commercial deal and the older Northern States had done the same 
thing. The laws of all the slave-holding States and the fundamental 
laws of the Union (the Constitution of the United States) all 
recognized and protected this property-right in slaves as thoroughly 
as it did land titles, or money, or any kind of personalty. 

The slaves as a mass, and with rare exceptions, were loyal to 
their owners. Large numbers of them had descended for many 
generations with the same family. The great, great grandfather, 
or even further back than that, of the present owner, had purchased 
the slaves, ancestors of some Dutch or English or other slave-trad- 
ing vessel, with perhaps no clothing on except a breech-clout, and 
their language of the most crude and unsatisfactory kind, while 
their mental and moral condition was only a few degrees above the 
brute creation. They had been brought from the jungles of Africa 
where they had subsisted on fish and lizards and the spontaneous 
production of that land. They had certainly been obtained from the 
heathen according to God's command, and it was just as certainly 
a blessing to the negro to be brought from their native jungles to 
civilization and religious influence according to God's plan. They 
were susceptible of being taught and advanced in their mental and 
moral condition as well as having their capacity for manual labor 
greatly increased, which v/as greatly needed by the purchaser. 

If Satan had not sowed the tares that brought on that horridly 
wicked and shockingly cruel Civil War, by this good day there 
would not have been a wild heathen negro in Africa, and there 
should have been by this time not a just as densely heathenish 
Esquimo left between here and the North Pole. If the Northern 
States had been looking after their own highest and best interest 
and acting in accordance with God's way, they would have dis- 
carded the African as they did because he had been created for a 
coi ntry of warm climate, and could not be made profitable in theirs ; 

■ 17 



and would have gone toward the North Pole and captured just as 
heathenish slaves from among the Esquimos, had them to shed their 
walrus skins and their dog skins and their white bear skins, and 
then use plenty of soap which they had never before seen or heard 
of or felt any need for; and then after cleaning them to a human 
consistency had them to don the cotton shirt and the woolen top- 
clothing; and then would have taught them the practical force of 
that passage of Scripture which says, "By the sweat of thy face 
shalt thou eat thy bread" — instead of eating no bread at all; and 
taught them to wash their faces every morning and their entire 
bodies at least once in a month, winter or summer, instead of never 
washing at all; yes, and taught them that when they had labored 
steadily for six days they could rest on the seventh day, and this 
because the Great Almighty, Creator of all things who had created 
them, said so, and just this alone, if they heard nothing more, would 
have excited their natural curiosity to learn more of the Great and 
Almighty God ; and then when they saw the master and mistress 
dress finer on that day than on either of the other six days and go 
away to be absent for several hours every Sunday, their natural 
curiosity would have impelled them to go and see and hear what was 
said and done. All of this is practical mission work according to 
God's plan. 

Instead of many thousands of these degraded Esquimos having 
died in their heathenish degradation and filth without any know- 
ledge whatever of the God that created them, there could by this 
good day have not been an Esquimo between here and the North Pole 
who had not heard and did not know of the living and true God; 
and all this would have been in accord with God's plan — a glorious 
mission work; and still more, very much niore, there never would 
have been that furious, dreadful, inexcusable Civil War which the 
tares brought on as a part of their harvest, which shed the life- 
blood of thousands of the best men who ever lived in this Republic, 
and expended the utmost energies of more than 2,500,000 soldiers 
made up of the philanthropic but fanatical and misguided people 
of this government, deceived as they were by the devil's tares, 
an army added to and more than doubled by the hirelings from 
Europe who were procured at a high price. 

And more, much more than all of this, there never would have 
been that cruel, unjust and bloody Boar War which shed the life- 
blood of thousands of as brave and patriotic men as ever shot a gun 
in defense of their rights and justice, who were finally overwhelmed 
by greed added to and inflamed by the prejudice against African 
slaves which the Boars possessed — another harvest of tares. In- 

18 



stead of this successful war of subjugation there would have been 
no war, but by this good day there would have been ten or twelve, 
or more. States of a great Republic of slave-holding States, made 
up for the most part of the enterprising young men of Holland, 
England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland, who would have owned 
plantations stocked with African slaves in this great African Repub- 
lic; and the millions of acres of the jungles and waste land of that 
country would have by this time been converted into cotton and 
rice and cane and corn fields vying for beauty and profit with 
our own beloved South-land, and competing in friendly rivalry with 
us in the commerce of the world. All of South America and all 
of the islands of our seas would have been slave-holding countries, 
and by this time there would not have been an African or Esquimo 
or Cannibal heathen of their type on earth, but there would have 
been many millions of contented, happy, and very useful slaves and 
laborers of African, Esquimo, and other inferior races which God 
in His wisdom and sovereignty intended should be "servants of ser- 
vants," and so proclaimed immediately after Noah left the Ark and 
repeated many times after that in His inspired Word. 

There would have been in the Northern and Western States 
of this Union by our day at least ten millions Esquimo slaves, and 
they would have been a very considerable portion of the capital 
of these States, and there would have been no conflict between the 
labor and capital because the labor would have been a part of the 
capital; and these millions of slaves would not now have been de- 
graded, ignorant, heathen, but civilized human beings who would 
have now been prolific and prosperous instead of being as they now 
are, almost exterminated by Satan's plan of civilization. Instead 
of this present ignorance and degradation, they would have heard 
and known much of the Almighty God their Creator, and they would 
have been civilized according to His plan, and there would have 
been at least ten million less of the anarchical skum of Europe and 
Asia crowding our cities and polluting our land; and there never 
would have been that bloody, destructive, and wicked Civil War 
which left us, as its reward, its hellish hate and untold millions of 
national debt after gloating for four long years and reveling in the 
life-blood of many thousands of the very best men that this country 
or the world ever produced — and all of this was only a part of the 
harvest of the political tares which were sown while men slept and 
much more can be told later in the Live Issue. 

Some ten years since, I was driving to this city from about 
three miles in the country in my buggy when I found a negro man 
walking who had come some three miles on the road before I met 

19 



with him. He had been working with a threshing machine, and it 
had rained v^here they were threshing during the night (Friday 
night), so that they could not thresh the next day; and he was mak- 
ing for his home in the city. His shoes were very damp when he 
came to the road where it had not rained ; and they were very thick- 
ly covered with the dust, showing that he had walked several miles. 
When I got opposite to him I checked up my horse and said, "Don't 
you think a good ride would beat a bad walk?" With a polite bow, 
and lifting his hat, he replied, "It would beat it mighty bad. Master 
Ben." From his reply and his actions I knew that he had been a 
slave and was acquainted with me, although I had not known that I 
had ever seen him before. So I said, "Come, then, and get in here 
with me," and he at once sprang to the side of the fence and com- 
menced to kick the long grass to clean the dust from his feet, and was 
soon seated in the buggy, and said, "I am sure you don't know me, 
but I have known you for years, and used to know a good many 
of the slaves you owned;" and then went on to name several of 
them. I determined at once to have him do nearly all of the talk- 
ing while we rode together, and I only tried to keep his mind and 
conversation on the subject that I wished to hear him discuss. 
His first start was to compliment me as a master, and tell what my 
slaves had said about that ; and he had a good deal to say about old 
slave times, and talked all the while more favorably of slavery than 
I expected him or any other negro to do; and finally said, "I thank 
my God from the bottom of my heart that my grand-mammy, away 
back, was brought from Africa to this country for a slave." Then 
I said, "You don't find many of your people who agree with you 
about this." And he replied, "There are a great many more than 
you might think for. I hear some of these young fellows that never 
were slaves saying mean things about the old slave-owners, and I tell 
them they are fools and don't know what they are talking about, 
and I ask them Where would you have been if your grand-mammy 
had never been a slave? and I tell them that if you or I either had 
been born in Africa we would not had much more sense than a wild 
monkey. And nearly every time you hear one of these young 
negroes talking that way about the old slave-owners, he has not got 
a dollar, or nothing but the clothes on his back, and never will 
have." Then he went on to say, "I bought a little house here in 
town and paid half down, and I am trying to pay for it, and it keeps 
me awake at night trying to get a way to pay my taxes and get 
something to eat for my family. I don't believe this thing you 
call freedom is half as big a thing as some people try to make it 
out." The ride with this man set me to thinking and investigating 

20 



the labor question more thoroughly, and had something to do with 
my writing this book. 

Lincoln never made a truer statement than when he said it 
was an interminable conflict and therefore impossible for this 
union of States to continue to exist part free and part slave. The 
two civilizations were entirely dissimilar and inconsistent, and "how 
can two walk together unless they be agreed," or agree to disagree? 
And how can they agree to disagree while one is going on the way 
that God in His wisdom and providence had plainly marked out and 
said, "Here is the way, walk ye in it," while the other had been be- 
guiled by Satan to sing the siren song of brotherly love and play 
upon the harp that alluring lullaby that all mankind are born free 
and equal? Does any sane person believe that God, in His Word, 
anywhere, commands that we shall love the filth, degradation, and 
heathenish ignorance of the naked African in his jungles, and the 
Esquimo in his skins of wild beasts and his burrow in the ice-clad 
earth, or the condition of any other human beings that are in a 
similar degradation? And then this lullaby of free and equal, free 
from filth, degradation and ignorance? Equal to what and to 
whom? The entire proposition is too supremely ridiculous to re- 
quire any reply — the statement refutes itself. But Satan kept all 
the while entirely out of mind the overwhelmingly potent truth in 
God's Word that the "love of money is the root of all evil," and God, 
in His v\7isdom and providence, had made this love of money to 
counterbalance itself in His plan for the labor system which He 
devised, so that the labor was a very valuable part of capital; and 
therefore no conflict between the labor and capital could exist; but, 
instead a constant, continual elevation of the lowest grade of heath- 
enism and degradation of the human race to religious influence and 
civilization according to His wise plan. 

What an overwhelming difference it would have made in the 
past, and what a difference it would make now if all of the states- 
men and politicians and public men would place a supreme esti- 
mate upon the "Thus saith the Lord" in regard to all matters of 
vital importance? It would make as infallible a guide to them as 
the compass is to the mariner. In the days of my youth I heard 
lawyers at the bar, who were not church members at all or pro- 
fessors of religion, quoting the Mosaic law and even passages of 
the New Testament; and it appeared to me then, when it was cor- 
rectly and aptly applied, to be an impregnable and incontestable 
establishment of their case. I have not heard that kind of argument 
in our courts for a long while. 

31 



The pen that wrote the proclamation that freed the slaves of 
America was the most destructive and damaging weapon that was 
ever used against the African race. They were a contented, happy, 
and prolific race, raised up by God's plan and providence from the 
lowest degradation and heathenism to a civilized and comparatively 
Christianized condition; and during these two hundred and more 
years of transformation they had been for the most part brought 
down along with the master's family, inherited by the son or daugh- 
ter from the parent from the slave-ship and the voyage from Africa 
to the day of Lincoln's proclamation. Each generation from the 
ship to that fatal day had been steadily advanced and elevated until 
they were the most trustworthy, reliable, and profitable servants 
in the world, and now at this late day it is almost incredible to re- 
late the numerous incidents of fidelity to the owner which was fre- 
quently displayed by the slave. I know that I would have been 
financially ruined by that war but for the faithfulness of my trusted 
slaves. If all the deeds of fidelity performed by the faithful slaves 
to their owners, during that bloody war, were even briefly related 
it would require a volume much larger than this one to contain 
them ; but I will relate a few as samples of thousands. 

I lived during the war about three miles away from any turn- 
pike road, but there was a dirt road which lay along the entire length 
of my farm and extended along two or three other farms to the 
turnpike which led to Winchester, Ky., about six miles distant from 
my house; and I was "over-seer" of the dirt road and took care to 
never permit it to be repaired during the entire war and of course 
it soon became impassable for any wagon or vehicle, and by this 
means we saved our grain and provender from the Federal Army. 
But my father's estate owned (and I had control of it), a two hun- 
dred acre farm which was bounded on one side by the turnpike, 
about a mile from Winchester; and this farm became the camping 
ground for the Federal Armies as they passed to and from Lexing- 
ton through Winchester to Mt. Sterling, back and forth. These 
soldiers had burned all the fencing on the road, and in sight of the 
road, on the farm ; but there was enough material left on the back 
part of the farm to make a temporary fence along the turnpike to 
enable me to get some benefit of the grass that would grow on the 
farm during the spring and summer. I was not willing to risk my 
mule teams upon that road for fear that soldiers might pass and 
press them into service ; so I had Herod, my ox-driver, to hitch two 
yoke of oxen to the feed wagon with the hay frame on it and go with 
three or four of my most reliable men to gather up material from the 
back part of the farm and make a fence along the road. They had 



worked there until the afternoon, when a regiment or two of infan- 
try came on a forced march from Mt. Sterling, bound for Camp 
Nelson, and pressed the wagon, oxen and Herod into their service 
and piled their knapsacks on the wagon; and then as many tired 
soldiers as could find a place sat all around it on the edge of the 
frame, leaving only room for Herod to sit on the front end to drive 
the team; and thus they put him into their forced march. When 
night came on, they went into camp between Lexington and Nich- 
olasville — more than twenty-five miles for an afternoon's drive for 
the ox-wagon and team. Herod told me that he noticed a pond of 
water on the side of the road about a mile back from where they 
went into camp, and he got permission from the Commander to take 
his team back to that pond for water which put him outside of the 
picket line, and instead of stopping to water his oxen he kept a 
steady "lick" for home all night; and by daylight next morning had 
come back about eight miles and stopped to hide his team from 
passers along the road behind a large barn and ice-house, a short 
distance from the road, where he fed his cattle and took a four or 
five hour's nap on the wagon while the oxen rested ; and when he 
awoke it was nearly noon. Then he hitched up and started for 
home, inquiring of every man he met riding in a buggy if he had 
passed any soldiers on the road ; and receiving a favorable reply 
each time he kept on his way until he was about ten miles from 
home, when a man in a buggy told him he had not passed any on 
the road, but there were lots of them in Winchester when he passed 
through ; so he determined to take no further risk and turned off to 
the left, and came through the farms from there to our home. He 
was thoroughly acquainted with the farms and took advantage of 
gateways so that he only had to take down three or four stake-and- 
ridered fences and put them back as he found them ; and about nine 
o'clock that night I was sitting on my front porch, brooding, and 
very sad, with the moon shining bright, with the stillness of the 
night, but the world very gloomy to me, when I heard the familiar 
words, "Ben, Buck, Bright, Ball," and a loud crack of the whip 
about a half mile distant in the woods in front of my house. I 
sprang to my feet, smacked my hands, and exclaimed, " Well done / 
There is Herod and the ox-team." I knew he would come back if 
they did not kill him or tie him ; but I had not the faintest glimmer- 
ing hope of ever seeing the oxen and wagon again. I retired soon 
after this in much better spirits than I had been for some time be- 
fore. Next morning, early, when I went to the back door, Herod 
was there waiting to make his report and I congratulated him upon 
his splendid success. All of the servants on the place and in the 

23 



neighborhood called him "King." My father purchased him from 
the estate of Roger Brookin when he was about sixteen years old. 
Herod and a man named Bob were the only two slaves I ever heard 
of my father purchasing. My father was making his brother Abram 
a visit, and while he was there my uncle was fretting and complain- 
ing of the aggravation and bad behavior of "little" Bob, as he called 
him because he had two of that name. My uncle had brought this 
Bob from Virginia with him when he removed to Kentucky, and 
my father soon learned of the old stock of my grandfather's slaves 
Bob descended from and told my uncle if he would put a fair price 
on him he would buy him, and they soon closed a trade. Bob had 
more of his old Virginia friends at his new home than he left at his 
old home and appeared to be more happy and better contented. 

My father brought with him when he removed from Virginia 
to Kentucky in 1818, Watt and Rachael (husband and wife), Jim 
and Elijah (two brothers about sixteen and eighteen years of age). 
These slaves were all born in his father's family and he received 
them as an inheritance. They had been raised by his parents from 
slaves which had been brought into the family from my grand- 
mother Inskeeps' parents or descended along with the Van Meter 
family and the families with whom they intermarried back to John 
Van Meter who was the son of the immigrant from Holland to 
New Amsterdam in 1663. 

Rachael and V/att reared five sons and three daughters, ac- 
cording to their ages as follows : Cynthy, Susan, Granvil, Anthony, 
Andrew, Dillard, Eunice, and Harve. All of them were stout able- 
bodied men and women. My father, in his life-time, had given to 
my older and only living sister, the second daughter, Susan, and 
she was considered the most efficient and valuable woman-servant 
in the family. He had given Granvil to my older brother, Isaac; 
and to my older brother, Jacob, he had given Anthony ; and he gave 
Dillard to me. All of the others my father still owned at the time 
of his death. My brother Jacob died a few years before my father 
and left Anthony and a man named Mark which he had inherited 
from our grandfather's estate, with three hundred acres of land, to 
his widow. My brother, Thomas C, inherited from our father's 
estate the youngest child, Harve, then about fourteen years of age, 
which old Rachael called her baby and made a great pet of. 

The first land deal I ever made was to purchase the life interest 
or dower of my sister-in-law's three hundred acres of land; and I 
induced her to include the two slaves in the deal, Mark and 
Anthony. Then I owned two of Rachael's children. In the mean- 
time Andrew had married Martha, the oldest girl my wife's father 

2-i 



had given her, and although he still belonged to my father's estate 
I paid hire on him and kept him at home, so that Watt and Rachael 
felt sure that I would own three of their sons and they were deter- 
mined that I should own the baby. Old Rachael gave me no peace 
on this account. In the meantime my man, Mark, married my 
brother Thomas' cook, named Mandy. Mark was worth $1200, and 
$600 would have been a full price for Harve, then about fourteen 
years old ; but my brother Thomas had learned that Old Rachael was 
determined that I should own Harve ; so when I offered to buy him 
he priced him at $1200, and said if I would rather he would give me 
Harve for Mark. So he had Old Rachael in my rear, and he stood 
very firm in front. He had inherited two hundred acres of land 
from our grandfather's estate which adjoined the lands I inherited 
in the same way and also joined the land I had bought of my sister- 
in-law, and I knew he wished to sell this land (which joined me and 
v/as tv/o miles or more from his residence), and buy lands that ad- 
joined him. I told old Rachael if she v/ould be quiet and have pat- 
ience I would own Harve if I had to give Mark for him; and this 
would quiet her for the time, until my brother Tom would say or 
do something to "set her on nettles" and make her come at me 
again. In this way I v/as for several months vv^ith old Rachael as a 
fire in my rear, until I finally got the land priced at what I thought 
was a $600 reduction; and then I swapped my $1200 man for his 
$600 boy and made the land deal, and made old Watt and Rachael 
happy. When my father made his will he did not mention old 
Watt and Rachael in it but told me that he wished me to take 
first-rate care of them as long as they lived at the expense of his 
estate ; and after his death I told what my father had said, and that 
they could live wherever they preferred, and they concluded to live 
where they were and occupy the house where they had lived before 
his death; but after remaining there for several months they con- 
cluded to go to Fayette County and live where the oldest son 
(Granvil who was then dead), had lived with my older brother, 
Isaac, where their son had left some family. After they had been 
there about one year, when I was making my brother a visit, they 
both came in delighted to see me and let me know that they had a 
matter they wished to lay before me, which amounted to this : The 
place where I lived was the old homestead of my grandfather, and 
in the latter part of his life he had bought an imported short-horn 
bull named "Goldfinder," for which he paid $1500, and built a fine 
large stable of nicely hewn logs twenty feet square, a story and a 
half high, and covered with first-class shaved shingles. Old Watt's 
proposition to me was to let him have Goldfinder's stable and have 

25 



it fixed up for him so that he could live in it and be far enough 
away from everybody "not to be bothered." It was at least fifty 
yards from any other building, in a blue-grass lot ; and a nice spring 
of water was in the lot, about twenty or thirty yards distant. I 
told him to get his master Isaac to send him up in his two-horse 
wagon with all of his possessions and I would let him have Anthony 
and Andrew and Dillard to help him, and he could get my wagon 
and haul all of the rock and lumber to build a house to suit his 
taste. Andrew was an ingenious mechanic, had built for me many 
rods of excellent stone fence and some brick flues for cabins, and 
my blacksmith shop, and was an ingenious fellow with tools of 
any kind. It was interesting to see the building progress. I told 
Andrew to fix the old man's house any way he wished to have it, 
just so that he made it look respectable on the outside. The first 
thing they did was to go to the creek and the quarry and get a sup- 
ply of broad, thin, flat rock and set them against the bottom logs 
of the building all around on three sides, leaving the door front free; 
then the cellar was dug out at least four feet deep and sloping in 
as it was made deeper, so that it was two feet smaller at the bottom 
on each side than it was at the floor. The dirt which was taken 
out was placed against the flat rock all around the three sides of 
the house, sloping from the house so as to thoroughly exclude the 
air and turn the water from the cellar ; and then the blue-grass sod 
was taken from where I told him he could have a garden and sodded 
on one side and the back end of his house, leaving one side of the 
terrace next to the garden for old Rachael to plant her pinks and 
daisies and hollyhocks; and on that side I had a small patch pailed 
in for their garden ; and a more fertile spot did not lay out of doors, 
because it was originally fine land and then the gleanings from the 
stable had been thrown here for years and then the blue-grass sod 
had covered that up for perhaps thirty years. There was a strong, 
close floor placed over the cellar, and another overhead to make a 
good room up to be reached by a step-ladder. Another step-ladder 
led to the cellar, a trap door to enter each, while a very 
broad porch or shed covered the door. One window cut op- 
posite the door, a flue built of brick for his stove, the building 
"chinked and daubed," and Watt's house was completed in accord- 
ance with his wishes; and I never saw two people who seemed to 
enjoy life more than those old darkies did as long as Watt lived. 
He died the second year of the Civil War, and after his death I had 
Rachael's oldest son, Anthony, to take care of her as long as she 
lived, which was four or five years. She lived to see freedom, and I 
have no doubt but it was the saddest sight she ever saw, although 

26 



she did not lack for the comforts of life. Anthony raised one son 
about the beginning of the war, and his wife got my permission to 
let her name him for me. After the war they raised a daughter and 
named her Rachael, and she is the only member of Anthony and 
Neoma's family now living, a large, stout, healthy woman. She has 
worked for my family as a cook and general house-servant and I 
would not wish for a more competent one but for her besetting sin, 
and it is the great and ruinous enemy of the race at this time — 
" Intoxicating drink and dope," which renders her utterly worth- 
less. I have taken her out of the clutches of the law and from pri- 
son and tried to control her, but to no purpose now; and the poor 
creature has shown her gratitude for my kindness by making what 
to her, must have been, quite a sacrifice; for after I had taken 
her from jail she purchased and brought to me a nice little china 
pitcher and insisted that I should accept it as a present just to let 
her show me her gratitude — without a master, without protection 
— a withering waif. 

The supreme devotion that old Watt manifested for my 
wife was very interesting. He showed very plainly that he consid- 
ered her the prettiest and the smartest and the best thing in the 
world. He called her "Miss," and he never bothered me or bother- 
ed about me concerning anything if he could get to see "Miss." 
She called him Uncle Watt. Nearly all of the men, women, and 
children on the place called him Daddy, or Old Daddy. He was my 
wife's gardener as long as he lived. She would never have him to 
do any work in the garden except to take two or three of the able- 
bodied men and have it planted by her supervision the way she 
wished to have it, and after that she had no further care of it. He 
would have it kept in fine condition. He made it a rule to have the 
cabbage ploughed once a week, and the entire vegetable garden 
cleaned of weeds once every week by calling out all of the field hands 
(6 to 10) at daylight one morning in every week to have the garden 
cleaned before breakfast. Watt was Commander-in-Chief of that 
force in that garden, and his orders must be obeyed implicity. On 
one occasion when Watt had the hands in the garden I walked out in 
sight of him and he called to me in a loud, coarse voice so that I 
knew he was angry, and when I answered he said, "Come here, 
please sir." I went, and he said to me, "I wish you would take that 
nigger there out'n this garden and never let him come in here no 
mo'. I tell him to do somethin' and he go right off to do somethin' 
else just like I had said nothin' and I don't want to be bothered with 
him no mo'." I replied to Watt by calling to Thruston at the 
far side of the garden in a very firm tone of voice. He came quick, 

27 



and when he came I said to him, "If I had a whip I would give you 
a few right now, and if you don't go and do just what the old man 
told you to do I will have your shirt off in tv^^o minutes." And he 
did not need to be told the second time. Every man in the garden 
heard what was said and I never had any further bother about the 
garden. Thrustcn was the oldest son of old Riddle my grand- 
father's body-servant during the war of 1812-13, and I inherited 
him and his youngest brother from my grandfather's estate, and 
this was the nearest that I ever came to whipping either of them. 
They were both drafted with some of my other men to build for- 
tifications at Camp Nelson; and Riddle, Jr. died of the fever while 
there, and was the first slave I lost by the war. Thruston came 
back after he had been there a few months but showed discontent 
after his return and ran away a short time before Lincoln's emanr 
cipation proclamation and I have never seen him since. He was the 
only slave I ever owned who left me before the proclamation of 
freedom. I ov/ned thirty-three — of all ages, sex, and sizes, when 
the war for their emancipation began. 

The v/ay I came to own my first slave was this : It must have 
been in the month of August, for I was not going to school and had 
been riding around with my father for days helping him to sepa- 
rate the live-stock on the farm wherever he wished to make any 
change and frequently going to the field where the hands on the 
farm were ploughing and hoeing corn. The noon meal (dinner) 
was at about twelve o'clock the year around, but the morning and 
evening meals vary from an hour or more to regulate the labor by 
the sun. The three meals were for the most part at 6, 12 and 6, 
but varied to 5, 12 and 7 in summer, and in the winter proportion- 
ately. I was in the seventeenth year of my age. After dinner 
my father and I walked dovv^n to the front stile. He had let his 
horse go with the saddle and bridle on to graze on the luxuriant 
blue-grass in the front lot for an hour or more while he had dinner. 
I said to him, "If you or I go after Bob (his horse) we will have 
trouble to get him, but if we send any of the boys they will have no 
trouble because he will think they are going to feed him," and see- 
ing a lad of about fourteen years down in the lower part of the yard, 
named Dillard, I called to him to "go and bring Bob here to father 
right quick." He scampered away down under the hill and when 
the horse saw him coming he only held his head up and without 
moving allowed the boy to put the reins over his head and climb up 
into the saddle by the stirrup. But instead of taking Bob to the 
stable for feed as the horse expected, he "mosied" him to the front 
stile and rolled off on the far side while my father mounted the 



horse leisurely from the stile, and then instead of riding away im- 
mediately he pointed with his riding whip to Dillard and said to 
me, "I am going to give you that fellow," and before I could make 
any reply, Dillard looking up into my father's face with a broad 
smile which showed two rows of fine broad teeth, said, "Dat suits 
me, Mastah." My father soon rode away leaving me with my 
darkey , who showed many signs of pleasure and delight. I very 
soon said to Dillard, "Let's go to the stable and see my filly, don't 
you think you can take good care of her for me?" "Yes, sir, I can 
keep her fat and sleek." We went to the stable and I showed him 
just how much oats and how many ears of corn I wished her to have 
at each feed, three times a day, and from that time on until several 
years after Lincoln issued his emancipation proclamation I rode a 
well-kept saddle horse, not all this time by Dillard, but constantly 
and carefully by him until after I was married. Then after a while 
I superseded him as my horse-groom by his youngest brother 
Harve, of whom I will have more to say later. 

In those Ante-bellum days we had altogether v/ood fires and 
when I went to keeping house Dillard kept plenty of wood on the 
long back porch and made me a fire in my bed-room and in the 
dining-room every morning before I got up ; in fact, Dillard was my 
body-servant and main-stay for several years after I v/as married. He 
was the fourth son and eighth child of Watt and Rachael whom my 
father brought with him when he removed to Kentucky in 1818 
and married my mother, the only child of Capt. Isaac Cunningham, 
Besides Watt and Rachael my father brought Phil and Nancy and 
two brothers of about twelve and sixteen years, named Jim and 
Lige, of whom I may have more to say later on. But Watt and 
Rachael were the two oldest slaves my father brought with him 
and were about his age. He inherited them from his father in 
whose family they had been born and raised, and no doubt from 
parents whom his parents had inherited from their parents, very 
probably back to the time when John Van Meter's four sons re- 
moved from New York state and built their forts in Virginia in 
1744 as (See Kirchival's History of the Valley). John Van Meter, 
this book describes as a man of roving disposition, a man who made 
his money principally by trading, and traded a good deal with the 
Indians outside of civilization and conducted something of a cara- 
van manned principally by a band of friendly Caw Indians whom 
he employed for the purpose. 

This John Van Meter had no doubt bought from some Dutch 
or English slave vessel a supply of slaves to give to his four sons 
when he urged them to go and possess some of the rich valleys of 

29 



Virginia, which they did in 1744 after procuring a land grant from 
King George I, through Gov. Gooch, then Governor of the Colony 
of Virginia. We know that each one of them brought slaves from 
New York when they came to Virginia, and it is not at all im- 
probable that Watt and Rachael and in fact all of these slaves' 
ancestors had been purchased by John Van Meter from a slave- 
vessel ; but we have no record as to when their ancestors came into 
the family, but we do know that these were all born in my grand- 
father's family and my father inherited them. 

Isaac Van Meter, the son of John, the enterprising Indian 
trader who moved from New York in 1744 and built his fort at 
what has since been known as the Indian Old Fields on the South 
branch of the Potomac in Hardy County, now W. Virginia, was 
killed and scalped by the Indians in 1757 because he disregarded 
the admonition and entreaties of the faithful slave woman. It was 
like this: It was her daily duty to ride out and bring the cows 
up and milk them, and as usual she went after the cows in the even- 
ing, but before she had gone far the horse began to prick up his 
ears and prance and snort until the woman became frightened by 
the horses' extraordinary behavior and slackened the reins when 
the horse scampered off in a gallop to the fort and when she came 
back in such haste without the cows her master asked what was 
the matter and showing great excitement and fright she said, 
"Mastah, dars Injuns out dar jes' sho!" "Did you see any Indians?" 
"No sir, I didn't see none, but old Dave smelt 'um and kep' cuttin' 
up till I loosened the lines and den he come taren' home. I tell 
you, Mastah, dars Injuns out dar jes sho. Old Dave jes' snorted 
and carry on jes' lak he does when he smell injuns and I know dars 
injuns out dar jes' de way old Dave come tarin' back." "You got 
scared half to death at your shadow, you go on and attend to your 
work, I'll bring the cows." "Massa, if you gwine out dar aint 
you gwine to take you gun?" "No, I don't need a gun. If there 
were any Indians out there they would be friendly Indians. There 
has not been a hostile Indian here in our country for four or five 
years. You go on to your work, I'll bring the cows." The woman 
obeys orders, but as she goes talks thus to herself: "Mastah 
talkin' 'bout good injun; aint no good injun 'cept dead injun." 
(the slaves dreaded and hated Indians.) She went directly to her 
mistress and was relating all of the above occurrence to her when a 
loud report from a rifle was distinctly heard perhaps a quarter of a 
mile away. When the curiosity at least of the entire 'family was 
awakened and all went out to see and hear, they had not long to 
wait before the horse came galloping back without a rider, and then 

30 



in great excitement the gates of the fort were quickly closed, the 
guns put in order, and the horn blown with that furious and con- 
tinued blast which brought everyone for miles around within its 
hearing with all possible speed to the fort, and as quickly as they 
could, with proper precaution, arrange to go, they went in search 
for Isaac Van Meter and found his bleeding, dead body, scalped 
and not far from where the faithful woman had turned back in 
fright for the fort. It was night when the dead body was brought 
to the fort and it rained during the night which so obscured the 
trail of the savages that there never was much definite information 
obtained in regard to them; but the opinion prevailed that it was 
some malicious brute from the tribe of Indians who had removed 
from that valley across the Ohio River and who had gathered up a 
small squad of his own kind and sneaked back to his old home to 
seek vengeance. 

Harve, the youngest child of Watt and Rachael, for whom I 
had swapped my $1200 man, Mark, for a $600 boy, was the most 
loyal, faithful, and devoted slave, that I ever owned. My wife 
contended that I made a pet of him and showed him great favors 
because I never required him to work in the field with the other 
hands or with tools, but I knew that he was worth more than twice 
as much to me where I did work him as he could have been as a 
farm hand or as a mechanic. I always kept a good horse, saddle 
and bridle for his own use and it required a good horse to do his 
service because he did a great deal of hard riding which I would 
have been compelled to do but for him; seeing after several hun- 
dred beef cattle and other live stock on the farm. He knew the 
number of cattle that should be in each pasture, and where every 
horse and sheep and pig belonged, and it was his duty to keep them 
in place, and it was his regular business to count the cattle in each 
pasture twice a week and see them every day to see if there was one 
with a cracked heel, or had slipped a horn, or any other trouble, 
and report to me, or if I was not at home, to get help from the field 
and put tar and a rag on the slipped horn, or verdigris on the cracked 
heel, or have done whatever he knew I would do if I were there. 
He kept my shoes well shined, my saddle and driving horses well 
groomed and cared for, and the mistress's carriage and horses in 
nice condition. He was passionately fond of a fine horse and kept 
the horses he used in as nice condition as those I used. He was as 
fine a reins-man as I ever saw on a coach seat, and drove my family 
carriage for about fifteen years, and kept the carriage, harness 
and horses in first-class condition. He had one of the horses that 
he drove to the carriage for four or five years trained for cutting 

31 



antics equal to a circus horse, and when the congregation began 
to disperse from the church he would have selected his place near 
the church door convenient for my wife and family to get in, and 
in a conspicuous place, and then by a certain twitch of the lines 
which the horse understood he would have him begin his antics, 
and by the time the larger number of people were coming cut he 
would have the horse standing on his hind feet and holding one 
front foot out as if to shake hands with the congregation, and all 
the while the other horse would be standing stock still; but some 
of the nervous ladies would think it passing strange that my wife 
and family would get right into the carriage without the least con- 
cern about that frantic horse. Harve was nearly as reliable, faith- 
ful, and true to the Southern cause as he was to me. I had an Irish- 
man in my employ living on my farm about one mile from my home, 
who v/as a very zealous Southern man, and he very soon found that 
Harve v/as thoroughly trustworthy for anything he could do for 
the Southern cause, and he had Harve to do many things that would 
have got his neck "cracked" if it had been known by the Federal 
authorities, and perhaps I would know nothing of it for weeks after 
it occurred and v/hen he had a first-rate opportunity he would tell me 
of it. "When I would caution him and warn him that if the Federal 
soldiers ever caught up with him they v/ould hang or shoot him, 
he would give one of his big "nigger laughs" and say, "Mastah, you 
can't do anything like that, but they never suspect me; they think 
I am a nigger." I had been riding a fine black saddle horse around 
town when there were no troops there, and soon after some came 
in and a Federal officer came with a posse to get him and came 
very near succeeding; but Harve and McGuire managed to save the 
horse that night. McGuire led the horse and eluded the pickets 
by going through the country in a back way to the cemetery and 
locked my horse up in a vault. An Irish friend of McQuire's was 
keeper of the cemetery and he had no difficulty in making this 
arrangement. There were a lot of Federal soldiers camped very 
near the cemetery, but McGuire said he knew that was the very 
last place a Yankee soldier ever wanted to go, and he knew the 
horse would be safe. I did not know where they had hid the horse 
until the soldiers left and they brought my horse home and told me 
all about this. 

Harve knew Mr. William Curry for years before the war, and 
he was with Morgan's command and was captured on the Ohio raid 
when Gen. Morgan surrendered and was taken to Camp Chase, but 
after a while was removed with others to a prison further North and 
when in the vicinity of Wheeling, V/. Va., he jumped through a 

32 



water-closet window and made his escape, then assumed the garb 
of a cattle-shipper which business he had followed before the war 
and returned on a passenger train to Covington, Ky., and made 
his way to his home within a few miles of my house, and his 
wife came the next evening to see me and let me know that Mr. 
Curry wished m.e to furnish him a first-rate horse that could out- 
run a Yankee and he would try to have it returned to me as 
soon as he could get along without it. I related these facts to 
Harve early the next morning and after he reflected for a few 
minutes, he said, "I had better get up the Phaeton filly and have 
her shod for him, (she was a mare by Impt'd Phaeton, dam by 
Colossus, he by Impt'd Glenco, and Harve had been riding her) 
she can go from here to old Richmond quicker than any Yankee's 
horse." I said, "Well, get her up and have her shod all around. 
And I told Mrs. Curry to tell Will to take the horse he finds in the 
stall right in front of the door, so you be sure to put her in that stall 
and leave the stable doer unlocked and then if she is not there in 
the morning we will not make much fuss about it." The next 
morning as soon as he saw me he said, "The filly is gone," and then 
chuckled as he added, "They will never catch him." The Phaeton 
mare was found in my front pasture about ten days or two weeks 
after that. 

If all of the occurrences in behalf of the Southern cause which 
Harve participated in were related here he would take up more than 
his share of this book. I have more than once met with soldiers 
during and after the war with whom I was not acquainted, and when 
they learned my name would enquire about Harve and relate 
something he had dene to help them out of a tight place when 
Gen. Morgan or Gen. Smith or Col. Cluke made their raids into 
Kentucky. He remained with me for several years after the war 
closed, but finally removed to Lexington and drove a carriage and 
waited on some v/ealthy gentleman and finally virtually destro^/ed 
himself with strong drink. He married a Lexington woman, but 
left no children and died before he was fifty years old. He was a 
very valuable slave but entirely unfit to be free, and did not wish 
to be. Sad, very sad to remember. His older brother, Andrew, 
who was my foreman in the farm labor both before and after the 
war, and was working for me when he met with an accident from a 
drill while he was preparing to make a blast, which finally ended 
his life after lingering several months. His widow, Martha, is still 
living and has tv/o children living. Dillard lived ten or twelve 
years after the war. He and his wife are both dead and left two 
daughters, and one of them is still living. Anthony, Andrew, Dil- 

33 



lard and Harve were all stout, able-bodied men — sons of Watt and 
Rachael, and I believe the entire family will be extinct with the 
second generation after the war. As slaves they were a prolific 
family. This is the blessing that freedom brought. 

Rachael was boss of the milking place for more than thirty 
years until my father's death. There would be from 15 to 30 cows 
to milk night and morning and she had three or four girls or young 
women to go with her and a boy to mind the gate and only let in 
as many cows at a time as there were milk maids, so that each calf 
would get one-half the milk while the milker got her share. In 
good weather the milking was done at the gate between the calf 
lot and the cow pasture, but in bad weather at the large shed which 
was near the negro quarters. Every woman on the farm was 
taught to milk, so when there was a large number of cows to milk 
every woman would go to help milk except the cooks and house- 
maids, and have a boy on a horse and one on foot to help with the 
cows and calves, and old Rachael was boss of that business. 

Among my earliest recollections of fun and frolic and real boy- 
hood pleasure was going to the sugar camp with old Rachael and 
with all the boys and girls, white and black, from about eight years 
of age up to sixteen or seventeen years old, to make home-made 
sugar (maple sugar and syrup), and old Rachael generally had one 
or two of the older women along to help her, more especially to 
manage "the kids" and keep them from worrying her beyond all 
endurance. This grove of about tvv^o hundred and fifty sugar trees 
was about midway between my father's residence and my grand- 
father's residence, and was conveniently accessible frorri either place, 
and the youngsters from both places were generally at the sugar 
camp early every good day. The camp consisted of a large rough 
shed covered with clapboards and a furnace with six iron kettles 
in it. At one end the kettle would hold at least forty gallons and 
then continually less size to the other end reduced to about ten 
gallons. After a good day's run of sugar water the two smallest 
kettles would contain ten or twelve gallons of thin syrup to be 
conveyed to the kitchen at home at night to be strained and boiled 
down to a thick syrup, or stirred off to sugar cakes the next day 
under the supervision of my mother. The process of sugar-making 
was to fill all the kettles with water from the trees, and then 
never put any water from the trees into the two or three smallest 
kettles after the first filling, but after the large kettles were one- 
half boiled down, replenish the small kettles from the large ones, 
and fill the large ones from the trees, and by night you would have 

34 



a nice thin syrup in the two smallest kettles, and the larger kettles 
still containing the water from the trees. 

All of the slaves of Kentucky were exposed to the machina- 
tions and intrigues of the Federal Army and their abolition influ- 
ence almost continually through the four years of strife, and it 
seems strange that they did not succeed more readily in decoying 
them away from their owners. This can only be accounted for by 
the utter ignorance of the Northern people and the outside world 
of a correct idea of the true relation which existed between the 
slave and the owner. They had no conception of the peculiar 
strong tie that existed between the slave as a slave to the owner, 
and the owner as an owner, a protector, and a guide to the slave. 
The slave was a part of the owner's money and in the wise provi- 
dence of God had been instead of its love being a root of evil, was 
made a shield and buckler for the slave and an incentive for the 
elevation and advancement of that human being from dense igno- 
rance, degradation, and filth to civilization and Christianity, and all 
of this wise providence was a mutual benefit to the slave and master 
as well as to the advancement and up-building of God's kingdom in 
the world according to His own wise way : "But while men slept 
the enemy sowed tares." Thousands of the more sensible and valu- 
able slaves remained with their owners after the close of the war, 
and withstood the overwhelming tide of fanaticism for a time, but 
like a struggling crew on a ship in a cyclone they were washed off 
a few at a time until now after nearly half a century it is a rare ex- 
ception that you will find a servant with his former owner or with 
the family of the former owner. 

There might be a great number of instances related of the fi- 
delity and faithfulness of slaves to their owners and their families' 
best interests during that horrid Civil War, and frequently at a ser- 
ious risk for the slave, but the negroes soon learned that they could 
with reasonable safety rely upon the fact that the Federal govern- 
ment and soldiers would rely and act upon the hypothesis that the 
slave would do anything within the bounds of reason to obtain his 
freedom, and so long as the slave could keep them under that delu- 
sion they could do a great deal in a clandestine way to protect and 
serve the owners' best interests. There have been many instances 
related, and not a few put in print, such as the following which has 
been clipped from a Southern writer and many similar instances 
could be truthfully related. 

"Two negro men belonging to an army officer's widow who 
lived with her young daughters on an Arkansas plantation, con- 
veyed $50,000 in gold in the cushions of an ambulance to Houston, 

35 



Texas — a place of safety from marauding troops, who burned the 
house and cabins, and captured the Hve stock. The Yankees 
would not molest escaping negroes. These were faithful to their 
trust. Similar instances are numerous." 

My father was passing through the grounds of his negro quar- 
ters when he saw a lad about four years old laying on the grass 
cutting many antics and didos, when he remarked to his mother who 
was at work near by, "That lad reminds me of a cub bear." The 
other negroes near by who heard what he said, after he got out 
of hearing riged and joked the mother about the child and he got 
the name of "Cub." I do not know what name his mother had 
given him, but whatever it was he lost it and was called "Cub" for 
the balance of his life, and was finally "Old Cub." This negro 
stammered and stuttered badly, made a very poor out at talking, but 
was a stout able bodied man about five feet, seven or eight inches 
high, and was as faithful and reliable for any work that he knew 
how to do as any man on the farm. Ke was never put to plowing 
because he could not say "gea" or "haw" in time to keep from plow- 
ing up the corn, but if he was told to drop the corn and put three 
grains in a hill there would be three grains in every hill and no 
more. If my mother wished to have the truck garden cleaned of 
weeds and hoed over she would ask father to let Cub work in the 
garden, and then if she told Cub to clean up the potatoes and the 
onions and the beets, and any other vegetable, when she went out in 
the cool of the evening to see the garden, as far as Cub had worked 
that day there was not a weed to be seen and everything was in 
perfect order. In cold weather, in fall or winter, when the other 
negroes would cut up a lot of wood for the family room fire. Cub 
did not need to be called to carry it and lay it on the large back 
porch right near to the family room door and I imagine that Cub 
dropped the last few sticks down a little harder than he had placed 
the others, anyhow mother would lay by her sewing or a book she 
might be reading and go to the cupboard or pantry to get a large 
slice of pie or two or three sweet cakes, or whatever dainties might 
be left from the last meal, to give to Cub. Then with his bows and 
a broad grin he would be able to twist his mouth around to the 
side of his face sufficiently to get out, "Thanky, Miss," and by this 
time any one of the maids who might be in sight and earshot would 
be so much amused that they would begin to titter and snigger with 
laughter when mother would turn on them, and while she kept 
her face as firm as she could, might rebuke them by saying, "Cub 
don't tell half as many lies as some of you negroes do," and then 
while the girl skipped quickly into the kitchen at the far end of the 

36 



long porch where she could give vent to her excessive laughter, 
while mother stepped into her room and closed the door where she 
could shake her fat sides at the amusing occurrence, and Cub would 
strut past the kitchen door and give a disdainful glance in as he 
went by holding his good things up in full view to all the occu- 
pants of the kitchen; and the darky in the kitchen, between her 
laughs, might say, "Mistus say Cub don't tell lies. He don't tell 
the truth neither 'ceps you give him a plenty time, and he couldn't 
tell many lies if he try." There came a great freshet in the late 
summer, and a small creek, the head-waters of Johnson Creek, which 
passed through my father's estate, known then as the Funk Lands. 
During a freshet this little creek overflowed its banks and washed 
the fence av/ay on both sides and washed cut a water gap which 
exposed a field of grov/ing corn to damage from a lot of cattle which 
were grazing in an adjacent pasture. My father had the entire 
force of farm hands with the horse wagon and the ox v/agon to 
haul rails and rebuild the fence which was soon all completed except 
the water gap and the little creek was still too flush to work in, 
and it was a problem to know how to make that secure from the 
depredations of the cattle (there was no barbed wire in those days). 
He had a tall tree cut down which stood near by and it made a long 
log which would extend across the creek and three or four feet 
into the bank on either side, and then had a ditch dug on either side 
to receive the ends of the log, and then the question was how to 
get this long log into its place with the ends in the ditches, and then 
it would be easy enough to cover the ends with dirt and rock so that 
the water could not lift it out of its place, and thus make the corn 
field secure. My father asked Jim and Lige and Herod and per- 
haps others for their opinions as to the best way to get the log 
where it was needed, and finally he turned to Cub who was stand- 
ing back to one side with his arms folded and taking quite an in- 
terest in what was said, and asked him how he thought was the best 
way to get the log in place. Then all of the young negroes began 
to titter and jump behind the large trees near by, two or three to- 
gether, and peep out to see and then fall back to hide and laugh, 
but Cub sprang to the large end of the log and then to the ditch 
on the near side and then he went upstream and said, "Oxen pull it 
here," pointing to the smaller end of the log, and pointing to the 
far side, said, "Water help down." My father saw him go through his 
motions, and his stammer, and said, "Cub's idea is a good one ; let's 
pull the large end to the ditch on this side and hold it there while 
we pull the smaller end up the creek, and then let Herod get on 
the saddle-ox and pull the leg down stream. Get a strong skid 

37 



on the far side that will keep the log from touching the bank until 
it gets on top. Half of you go with Jim in the horse-wagon across 
the creek and the others stay on this side to hold the log here with 
spikes;" and it was very soon put in place, but the surprise and 
great amusement was my father calling on Cub for his opinion. 

Jim was my father's foreman for many years after Watt retired 
from that position, and he willed Jim and a young fellow named 
Bush, who drove his carriage when Jim wished to be excused, and 
several other men and three women to my mother. Jim had com- 
plete control of my mother's farm (about 500 acres of land) as long 
as she lived. I lived about a mile away and he consulted me about 
all matters of importance, but I consulted him about some farming 
operations, because he had more experience than I had and was ar^ 
extra good hand to raise crops and to take care of them. During the 
war, Jim had two large cribs full of fine corn that he had raised, 
and although my mother lived about three miles from any turn- 
pike road there was a gate-way and a fairly good road to get to 
her place, and a Federal officer had learned that the corn was in her 
cribs, and brought eighteen wagons and loaded them from a crib, 
taking about 540 to 550 bushels of my mother's corn. I saw Jim 
coming in a gallop on one of the carriage horses, and I knew 
something was going wrong, and when he related these facts to me 
I told him there was only one thing that we could do and that was 
to have mother get a voucher for the corn and I would try to col- 
lect pay for it. My mother asked for a voucher giving the amount 
of corn he had received. He wrote the voucher payable when she 
proved her lopaltp, which stirred her Cunningham blood about to 
the boiling point. She asked him where he was from and he re- 
plied, "from Ohio." Then she turned on him, in her wrath, and 
said, "When my father was helping to drive the British and Indians 
from that country he had no idea he was helping to hand it over to 
a gang of theives. If he had known as much as I know now he 
would never have made his bed on the brush piles, and covered up 
with the snow, and shortened his life for any such a gang of 
thieves." Jim said, "the way Mistus talked to that Yankee scared 
me." I was afraid she would make him mad and he would tear the 
farm up, but he said something in a low tone to one of his men who 
was very close to him, and he went away with his wagon train of 
corn. 

My mother had me to take the voucher to a rampant Union 
man, from whom she had bought thousands of dollars worth of dry 
goods in bygone days, for clothing the household, and asked him to 
collect the claim. But after this man had failed to collect the debt 

38 



for six weeks or more, I went to get the paper and the man said he 
had mislaid the paper and could not find it. My mother never re- 
ceived a cent for that corn, but Uncle Sam paid all it was worth for 
it. "Loyalty" was very profitable in Kentucky at that time, 

Jim had charge of my mother's farm as long as she lived, but 
she died before the close of the war, and after her death and after 
Lincoln's proclamation of freedom he lived in the neighborhood 
for a few years, bought a cottage in Winchester where he spent the 
balance of his life, and while he was living there I saw him fre- 
quently and he called me by the same name from my early youth 
to the day of his death, viz : "Master Binny." Several years be- 
fore his death I made him a present which appeared to enlist his un- 
bounded appreciation. I had a dress suit of broadcloth made, and 
before I had worn it a half dozen times I had increased in flesh and 
weight until I could not wear the suit at all, and in thinking of what 
use I could make of them I concluded that they would fit Jim nice- 
ly. The next time I saw Jim I told him if he would come to see me 
right soon I thought I could make him a present that would fit his 
taste. I explained to him that I had entirely outgrown my finest 
suit of clothes, and I believed they would just fit him. He did not 
make any unnecessary delay of the visit and the next time I saw him 
after his visit he said no tailor could make a better fit for him than 
they were. He lived only a few years after this. He died before he 
was sixty-five years old. I was not at home when he died, but the 
first time I saw a member of the family I was told all about his sick- 
ness, death, and burial, and that he had made it known to all the 
family that he must be buried in that suit of clothes, and concluded 
by saying that he was the finest dressed corpse that has been buried 
in this town for a long while. After his freedom, Jim assumed the 
name of James Dudley, which I never could account for, unless it 
was his admiration for the Rev. Thomas P. Dudley, a man of con- 
siderable note in our community, who owned a farm in Fayette 
County, Ky., and owned a few slaves. 

Looking back for sixty years or more, as my mind's eye can 
see distinctly, and then looking around us and seeing the daily oc- 
currences which are forced upon our observation and attention, we 
can get quite a distinct light if we take God's Word "as a light to 
our path." His word is just as distinct and plain in regard to this 
labor question as it is in regard to matrimonial relation. We might 
have the most bitter opponent of African slavery, or in other words, 
the most radical abolitionist to say all that could be said within 
the bounds of truth against this slavery and admit all that can be 
thus said. Then, in not one particular has the negroes' moral or 

39 



physical condition been improved by freedom over what it would 
have been if they had continued in slavery up to this time and in 
their condition progressed with the balance of the world as they 
would necessarily have done and there would have been at least 
double the number of them that are now living. Lincoln's procla- 
mation freed thirty-three for me, and I cannot now find or hear of 
half of that number and their descendants. 

Anthony and Andrew were the only two slaves that I owned 
who were older than myself, and neither one of them was five years 
older, and they have both been dead more than twenty years. Their 
parents (Watt and Rachael) both lived, as slaves, to be more than 
severity years old and they raised seven children to be stout, 
healthy men and women, to be freed. And not one of them lived 
to be sixty years of age, and nearly all died before they 
were fifty years of age, and they have all been dead more than ten 
years, and from this entire family and descendants there are only 
four or five living and one of them blind and helpless. If freedom 
did not mean extermination for that family then I do not know what 
to call it ; and a more healthy, strong, hardy family of slaves would 
have been hard to find. Of the entire thirty-three of my slaves of 
all ages and sexes I am confident that there are not more than fifteen 
of them and their descendants now living. If this is not extermina- 
tion, what is it? If there had been no disturbance of God's plans 
by "Satan's tares" until this time I am very certain that without 
buying a slave I v/ould have owned or v/ould have given away to my 
children at least fifty slaves, and in God's way we could have had a 
happy, prosperous, and prolific advance. 

But now, while I have four sons and three daughters prosper- 
ing in this world, the thirty-three slaves are well nigh exterminated 
by the crazy fanaticism which was produced by "Satan's tares," 
v/hich has not only brought this destruction of the negro after that 
shockingly cruel, bloody, and destructive Civil War with its untold 
millions of debt and other horrors, and then left an interminable and 
destructive strife between capital and labor which is entirely be- 
yond the v/isdom and power of man to reconcile, because "the love 
of money is the root of all evil," and it is beyond the power of man 
to destroy that root. God, in His wisdom, had made this root a 
shield and protection for labor by making labor an indispensable 
part of capital, but Satan's strategy has subverted God's plan, 
hence this interminable strife which greatly retards the advance- 
ment and upbuilding of Christ's Kingdom in the civilized and most 
enlightened portions of this world, while the most degraded and 
heathenish people are either exterminated to give place for civili- 

40 



zaticn, or neglected and left to self-destruction by degradation, 
filth, and ignorance. But this is anticipating some what upon the 
Live Issue to be discussed later. 

I consider, Shepherd, the negro missionary to Africa from this 
country, the greatest living man of the negro race, as he is well edu- 
cated, very intelligent, and full of the grace of God, and he is spend- 
ing his life, his best efforts and energy for the advancement and ele- 
vation of the negro race in their native land; but I am convinced 
that if those negroes that Shepherd comes in contact with in their 
native land, could be subjected in slavery to civilized, intelligent, 
and enterprising owners they would be advanced in civilization and 
intelligence a vast deal faster and more effectively than Shepherd 
or any other man can do this in any other way; because that was 
God's way, and of course it v/ould be much better for the slave as 
well as the master if the owner had the grace of God in his heart, 
but even without this the owner's self-interest ("the love of money") 
would impel him to advance the slave as much as possible, because 
in degradation and ignorance the slave v*7ould be comparatively 
worthless, while every advance that was made in intelligence and 
capacity would enhance the slaves value and would therefore be 
a great incentive to this end. 

From the Leader evening paper of June 21, 1910, we copy the 
following item : "Twenty-five killed in an explosion to-day. Work- 
men in a quarry of Portland cement (Union men). Near Ogden, 
Utah. Most of the killed were Japanese and Greeks." This is 
merely a sample taken at random of similar occurrences recorded 
almost daily of destruction of life in quarries and mines of various 
kinds throughout the country, and the number of lives lost varying 
from this, as a minimum, to sometimes hundreds. If these twenty- 
five laborers had been Esquimo slaves they would have represented 
at least $25,000 in that Portland cement corporation, and there would 
have been every needed precaution taken to prevent such an acci- 
dent, and the corporation greed which is nov/ so universally con- 
demned would have acted as a life-preserver to protect these lab- 
orers from harm, and all of this would have been in accord with 
God's plan and no conflict between capital and labor. 

The eld Scotch adage of "Like man, like master," was more 
literally true with the African slave than with the Scotch white ser- 
vant. The African is by nature an imitator, and I have known cases 
which were very strikingly so, and very amusing. A gentleman who 
owned a very faithful and valuable servant who had charge of his 
master's blooded stock when they were being exhibited at the Coun- 
ty Fairs and some of the State Fairs, was a very competent man that 

41 



had been born and raised in his master's family. The master had 
one defective eye which he kept closed most of the time and he had 
a habit of clearing his throat before he began to talk and other 
peculiarities, and when, in the absence of the master, gentlemen 
would go around to the stalls to see this stock, this servant would 
unconsciously close one eye, clear his throat, and go through with 
his master's peculiarities, and his being utterly oblivious of the fact 
made it the more ludicrous and amusing. This slave bestowed the 
utmost care upon the stock, and appeared to get as much pleasure 
and delight from receiving a premium as his master did. 

In the months of April and May, 1853, I traveled over a con- 
siderable part of the best agricultural sections of England and Wales 
for six weeks in a carriage through Yorkshire, Durham, and pretty 
much all of the best sections of both counties, and some little in 
Scotland, and I became thoroughly satisfied that the laboring class 
in that country at that time was not as well cared for and had not 
as much of the comforts of life as the same class had in Kentucky 
and Virginia. I had not traveled over the cotton States but had 
traveled over Kentucky several times, and over Virginia sufficiently 
to be thoroughly acquainted with the condition of the slaves in these 
States and had good reason to believe that all of the slave States 
lived in about the same way. The farmer and his family, includ- 
ing his slaves, lived on the "fat of his land," eating and consuming 
all of the best that his farm produced and selling what he could 
not consume. The sun did not shine on any country on this planet 
where there was more universal and unstinted hospitality than 
prevailed throughout the slave States of America. That passage of 
Scripture which says, "Be careful to entertain strangers" was as 
universally and cheerfully obeyed as in any country in the world. 
I have traveled on horseback and otherwise over Kentucky and 
Virginia for weeks at a time and many times staying at farm houses 
at night wherever my business and convenience led me, and was 
hospitably and comfortably entertained by a family whom perhaps 
I had never seen or heard of before. The last salutation would very 
probably be, "If you ever come in this neighborhood again we will 
be glad to have you stay with us" and with no more thought of pay- 
ing or charging for the night's lodging than we would have thought 
of flying — and human beings did not fly in those days. And all of 
this was in accord with God's plan as revealed in His Holy Word. 
A very large part of the wealth and affluence and comfort of these 
States was on the farms and plantations, and nearly all of the far- 
mers owned at least a part of the land on which he lived and at least 
a part of the labor which they employed in their business, and it 

42 



was reliable and stable, and those he hired were just as reliable as 
his own, if they had not been he would not have employed them. 
His labor was a part of his capital and therefore there was not the 
least conflict between his capital and his labor, and it was little or 
no inconvenience to entertain a wayfaring man. Mr. Frank Hasper, 
a breeder of race horses, who resided in Woodford County, Ky., 
made the following statement to me and I have not the least doubt 
of its correctness: When he bought and paid for Impt'd Glenco 
($500 for the horse with a saddle and bridle) in one of the Carolinas 
he had $2.50 in his pocket left from the deal, and he rode the horse 
to his home in Woodford County, Ky., and had a comfortable lodg- 
ing with supper and breakfast at a farm house every night, with his 
horse well fed and groomed and sometimes he would stop in at noon- 
time when he heard a horn blow and get his dinner and have his 
horse fed, and when he arrived at home he had a little small change 
left from the $2.50 with which he started ; having paid out the largest 
part of the $2.50 for ferrying over the rivers he had to cross on his 
way home and through toll gates which he had passed on turnpike 
roads, and occasionally a dime to a boy for extra attention to his 
horse. This kind of hospitality was the universal custom through- 
out the slave holding States and it was no serious inconvenience 
and it was in perfect accord with God's command and admonition, 
as (see Hebrews 13: 2), "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, 
for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." (Alluding 
to Abraham in the Old Testament entertaining angels on their way 
to Sodom) ; and (see Romans 12 : 13 — given to hospitality) ; and 
(see 1st Timothy 1: 2), "A Bishop must be given to hospitality as 
one of the imperative requisites for an officer in God's Church ;" and 
(Thes. 1: 2 — is to the same effect). Now any matter which is of 
such vital importance as to be repeated so frequently as this is in 
God's Word should certainly receive serious consideration. 

When the labor system was conducted in God's way it was 
entirely practicable to heed this admonition, but now since the har- 
vest of tares, it is frequently nearly an impossibility, though the 
heart may yearn for the privilege ; all of which adds more testimony 
to the truth that whenever man attempts to make any improvement 
or change in God's way he is very certain to make a botch if he does 
not commit a crime, and he is nearly certain to do both. 

To look back at Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, at this 
distance of nearly fifty years, it appears rather ludicrous, and I have 
sometimes thought it was a case of extreme desperation. Thous- 
ands of people of the Northern States and the outside world had 
been brought by the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" literature and the pul- 

43 



pit and political oratory of that day, to believe if the yoke of slavery 
was only lifted then the slaves would rise in their fury and with the 
hatchet and axe and corn-knife, and such-like implements of des- 
truction, make a bloody feast for fiends of the decrepit old men and 
women and children who were at home, as they thought, entirely 
unprotected and at the mercy of the slave. All such fanatics must 
have been bewildered, after months of waiting had passed beyond 
the proclamation and not a drop cf bloodshed of the mistress or any 
of her children by any slave. Is this not proof as true and strong 
as "Holy-v/rit" that the outside v/orld knew little or nothing of the 
real and true relation that existed between the slave and the owner. 
Where, or how, did President Lincoln get authority to write that 
proclamation? He knew that it was ignoring and over-riding the 
constitution of the United States, and there had been no authority 
given by Congress. If he had been the Czar of Russia, or of late, 
even the Emperor of Germany, he might have fallen back on the 
"Divine right," but no, it was just simply a military necessity. But 
when you get down to the bottom facts it was to stir up and renew 
the lagging enthusiasm of the Northern people, and it was well- 
timed and had the desired effect on his people, and a correspond- 
ingly opposite effect in a less degree upon the Southern people who 
were then almost worn to a frazzle. But then what about the 
slaves? More than two-thirds of them in the Confederate lines 
and those did not hear of the proclamation perhaps for months after 
it was issued, and some never heard cf it until after the close of 
the war. Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were within the Fed- 
eral lines and of course the slaves of these states heard of it as soon 
as their owners did. 

I called all of my servants up that were of the age of discre- 
tion and told them of the proclamation and that we would be com- 
pelled to abide by it, and I said, "Any of you that wish to go where 
you think you can do the best for yourselves and your families can 
have my wagon and team and move your families to town and go 
from there v.^herever you like. You must take care of yourselves, 
now. You do not belong to me but any of you that wish to work 
for me I will pay what is fair and right for your work, and you all 
know that I have a good supply of provisions and can feed you and- 
your families, but remember that I am free just as much as you are. 
You must learn to take care of yourselves and make your own liv- 
ing for yourselves and families." As soon as I stopped talking to 
them a man named Albert, who I had bought the first year of the 
war from a Mr. Lowe (a strong Union man) who had a blacksmith 
shop and who owned a family of slaves and had brought this fellow 

44 



up from early boyhood in his shop. He was about twenty-two years 
old and quite a good mechanic, an excellent horse-sheer, and he had 
been running my shop since I bought him. He said, "Master, you 
know what I promised when you bought me ; that I would stay with 
you until you said, 'go.' No matter how this war turns out you 
will find me in that shop working right along like nothing had been 
said, and you just do whatever you think is right and that will do 
for me." And he worked right along and run that shop for five or 
eight years after the war closed, and until I had curtailed my busi- 
ness so that I did not need a shop, and then I went with him to see 
a man who had a shop six or eight miles av/ay and helped him to 
make a deal to work for that man as long as he worked at his trade, 
but he finally v/ent the way of a large number of the best slaves 
that I ever knew ; he killed himself with strong drink, and died com- 
paritively young. He was the hardest slave to set free that I ever 
owned, and was really as valuable a slave as I ever owned, although 
I paid only $500 for him, and this is the way I came to own him: 
I was riding from my house through a woodland pasture to my 
mill and shop and stock barns about 3/^ of a mile distant from my 
residence, and Albert was in the woods where he could see me when 
I started from my house and could tell where he could meet me in 
the woodland, as he did, and when I was within speaking distance he 
took off his hat, and with a polite bow, said, "Sir, I would like to 
talk with you, please." I could see at a glance that he was greatly 
disturbed and excited, and he detained me there for at least a half 
hour pleading his cause and insisting that I should go and buy him, 
and finally I told him to go to my shop and stay there until I came 
and I v»7ould go and see Mr. Lowe and if he would sell him at a mean 
price I would buy him. I went and found Mr. Lowe in his shop 
and told him that I had found a runaway in my woods that called 
himself Albert and said he belonged to him, and he begged m.e to buy 
him and I told him to go to my shop and stay until I came back and 
I would come and see you. If you will put a low price on him to 
me I will buy him running in the woods, or you can go home with 
me and I will help you to find him. He finally priced him to me at 
$1000.00, and that was the price he could have put him in the army. 
I told him, "The last word your man said to me was that I could 
tell you that he was not going in the army, that it was not his fight 
and he was not going into it. I cannot afford to pay any such a 
price as that. It may be only a little while until he is as free as 
you are and you are helping to set him free." He said, "What will 
you give me for him?" and I replied, "I will give you a check for 
$500 for a clear bill of sale for him and take my chances for him run- 

45 



ning in the woods, or you can go home with me and I will help you 
to find him." He replied, "If I get him he will do me no good, and I 
will sell him to you." He gave me a bill of sale for Albert and war- 
ranted him sound and healthy and a slave for life, and in four years 
Albert was as free as William Lowe or I either, but I made a good 
bargain then and this was the last slave I ever bought, and I never 
did sell one of my own. All the slaves that were with me when the 
emancipation proclamation was issued remained with me for mon- 
ths after that and most of them remained until the war closed and 
some of them for many years after that. This man, Albert, had 
some of the most practical, hard-sensed ideas of any negro that I 
ever knew. He was working in my shop when the negroes received 
the right to vote, and although I had never said a word to any of 
them about voting or talked politics to them, when the election 
day came he said to me, "You know that none of us negroes know 
anything about politics, and I believe it is a fool notion to let any of 
us vote, but there are lots of them going to vote and I have deter- 
mined that if you v/ill tell me every time who you vote for I will 
vote that same way, and then your vote will count two instead 
of one." And he did this as long as he lived; and the man, Harve, 
of whom I have written elsewhere, did the same thing. It was an 
open ballot in those days and there could be no doubt about how the 
votes were cast. There were several of my former slaves who did 
not vote and paid no attention to elections. 

I never had the pleasure of attending a 4th of July or Feb. 22nd 
celebration by the negroes from two or three cotton plantations in 
slave times, but from the descriptions I have heard given of them, 
to witness one was to carry with you for the balance of your life a 
most amusing recollection. Each plantation whose slaves were to 
participate in the celebration would elect an "orator of the day," 
or perhaps two from each plantation for the occasion, about a week 
before the holiday to give them time to prepare their speeches and 
get their extra apparel for the occasion; and then to see the six 
or eight, or more, "orators of the day" step out with the master 
of ceremonies, who was of course the "Big negro" of the neighbor- 
hood, and these would have seats on the platform while the several 
hundreds of men and women and boys and girls would hasten to 
make themselves comfortable in any way that suited their con- 
venience to get within hearing of the speakers, when the boss of 
the occasion would step to the front and give each orator, besides 
his own name, some high-sounding or ludicrous nick-name, and 
as each one is mentioned there is no difficulty in designating him, 
because as soon as his name is called he begins to bow and strut 

4G 



around to show beyond doubt "that's me," and the celebration 
begun, and to give an adequate description of the proceedings of 
that occasion is entirely beyond my pen, pencil, or paint brush. 
But the man who could murder the most of the King's English 
in a given length of time in the most fantastic style and keep it 
up for the greatest length of time, was the orator Vv^ho excelled. 
A few anecdotes here may serve to suggest the idea and illustrate, 
such as this : A negro woman lost her husband. He died intes- 
tate and left four little infants on her hands. She went to the Pro- 
bate Judge's office to be appointed executor. She found the Judge's 
office and said, "Is you de reprobate Judge of dis cote?" "I am the 
probate Judge." "Well, you's de man I's lookin' fur. My husband 
done died detestable and left me four little infidels on my hands 
and I's come here to be pinted executioner." 

There was another that I have seen in print of a negro boy 
who was interested in the welfare of Judge Billings. The Judge 
was drinking water from a well in his back yard while his hired 
boy was swinging on the back yard gate, and said, "I'm feared you'4 
better quit drinkin' out'n dat 'ar well." "What is the matter with 
this well?". ."Hit's pizen. Hit'll kill you. Go 'way! Don't you 
know hit's don been scandalized by phrenologists, and hit's done 
bin decided dat hit's two parts oxhide and one part hydrophobia. 
Go 'way from here. Hit will kill you, sho !" 

The negroes in the cotton and sugar producing States, where 
there were generally more of them together, appeared to enjoy 
life more and have a happier time than in the other States, 
and besides this the climate was warmer and more congenial to 
them. But they naturally incline to congregate, and they are much 
better contented when there are quite a number of them together. 
This appears to be a part of their nature which can not be bred out 
of them. In their native jungles they lived in villages with their 
huts close together, which was a matter of imperative necessity to 
be in sufficient numbers to prevent the wild beasts from devouring 
them, of which they were in constant danger from the most feroc- 
ious kinds. 

Henry Clay, the great Statesman and sage of Ashland, ad- 
vanced the most practical scheme which was called gradual eman- 
cipation, and if it had been judiciously carried out in connection 
with a continual gathering-in or importation of a fresh supply of 
degraded heathens from wherever they might be found, there would 
have been some real philanthropy and wisdom manifested, and then 
by this time this class of human beings would have been as scarce 
on this earth as wild mustangs are on the plains of Texas and Mon- 

47 



tana, and this world would have been immeasurably advanced in 
every particular and strikes would never have been heard of in 
this country. Mr. Clay's plan was for the Government to buy and 
set free the slaves that displayed intelligence and capacity suf5cient 
to prosper when left entirely to their own resources, if such desired 
to be free; then to colonize these free men in Liberia, where our 
Governm.ent would hold a protectorate over them, but the political 
excitement was so intense between the abolitionists of the North 
and the "fire-eaters" of the South that neither party v/ould give 
much heed to his suggestion, and he died before the final dreadful 
conflict commenced. Senator John J. Crittenden advocated this 
plan of emancipation but his best efforts amounted to nothing. 

This great Statesman, Henry Clay of Ashland — (to distinguish 
him from Col. Henry Clay of Bourbon County, a gentleman of con- 
siderable note and wealth who never participated much in politics) 
owned quite a number of slaves — forty to fifty, of all ages. V/hen 
Mr. Clay went to Washington if he went alone he would take one 
man — his body-servant, but if his v.'ife vv^ent with him he would take 
two men and a maid, and in those days he drove through from Lex- 
ington, Ky., to Washington City in his carriage, v/ith tv/c men up in 
front on the box of the coach with the woman on the front seat in- 
side with the care of the youngest child, which of course must go 
along. His man, Charles, vv^ould go always, and if any others, then 
Aaron and his wife Lizzie Ann were to go. Charles v/as at one time 
decoyed away from his master by the machination of some Yankee, 
but very soon discovered the folly of his way and returned very 
penitent to his master and remained vv'ith him as long as he lived. 
It would have been a revelation and perhaps entertaining for a 
Northern man or any person who v/as not familiar with slave life to 
hear the conversation which would take place between a group of 
the headmen of these slave-owners when they met at the County 
Fairs or such like gatherings where they drove the family carriage 
to the Fairs for several days in succession and met for several hours" 
each day and had their social chat. It might be Mr. Clay's Charles, 
Major Shelby's Spencer, Capt. Cunningham's Riddle, I. Vanmeter's 
Jim, Capt. Warfield's, Mr. W. Sutton's, Preacher Breckinridge's, 
and a great many more that might be mentioned for this region 
of country ; and remember that in those days more than two-thirds 
of the intelligence, wealth, and affluence of the entire South v/as 
in the country residences; in the cotton, rice and sugar countries, 
more gorgeous and finer than in the other slave states, but through- 
out the entire South commodious and comfortable homes for black 
and white. The conversation among the servants would be like this: 

48 



"Jim, how is your corn crop this year?" "Well, sir, we have got a 
good crop of corn — better than average. We will make 12 or 14 
barrels to the acre. We got a good stand this spring, and when it 
was about six or eight inches high there come a dry spell on us; 
hardly a drap of rain for about three weeks, and I begun to git 
scared, but about the time we got all the crop plowed over the 
second time there come a good rain, and it rained right even on 
ahead all night, a slow, study rain, then you never did see corn grow 
off like it did. We had to hurry up to plow that corn over twice 
more before it got too big. While we were givin' it the last plowin' 
it was away up along the horses' sides, and it never did lack much 
for rain after that. It is about ready to cut now, and it is a good 
crop. Our wheat was a little pinched by that dry spell, and then 
it got too much rain before it was cut and the rust got it a little, 
but we just get it thrashed the other day. We had a little more 
than one hundred acres, and we will git about two thousand bushels. 
We have got it all safe in pens where it will keep safe and dry for 
twelve months. It aint worth much. I don't know what we will 
do with it, but we have got it in a safe place. It can stay right 
where it is for twelve months to come without any damage." "Well, 
Jim, what are you going to do with all that corn?" "Do with it? 
Lord, man, you never heard of having too much corn on our place. 
Every shock of that corn will soon be settin' up like a sugar loaf 
and then it will stay till the frost gets right heavy, and by that time 
two hundred of our cattle will go to New York as fat as hogs with- 
out a 'year' of corn, but the other fifty, master will put on some of 
the best grass right jining the corn field, and then he will say, 'Now 
Herod, you git your ox team and take one of the boys and give the 
cattle three shocks of that corn every morning, and git the corn 
from the middle of the field while the weather is dry and when it is 
muddy haul from next to the fence.' We will shuck out thirty or 
forty acres of our corn. I think we have got two or three pens of 
old corn, now, but the sows and pigs will get all of that and the 
fatenin' hogs will get some of it before we shuck the new corn. 
We have got plenty of corn in the crib for the horses and bread. 
But along about the first of December you will see master git his 
leggin's on and strike out on old Bob, with his cattle whip, and he 
has done told me the day before he was going away for a week or 
two, and he tell me about work enough on the place that he wants 
done to keep me and all hands busy for a month, and then when he 
rides by he will holler at me loud enough for everybody to hear, 
'Jim, keep things going here while I am gone,' and he has started 
Master Solomon out the day before down towards Maysville to buy 

49 



cattle and then he goes over the river into Madison County and 
all them counties on that side of the river, and you wont hear of 
either of them maybe for two weeks or more, but when they do come 
you will see more than 100 cattle in front of them. They tell me 
that sometimes Master tells Mistress that he believes the cattle 
Solomon bought are better than the ones he bought and did not cost 
any more money. They all say he can buy cattle as well as any- 
body. But the next oldest son, Isaac, he lives with his grandfather. 
We don't see much of him." "Riddle, don't he buy all of your 
cattle?" "Yes, old Master never goes off to buy cattle. The young 
man buys all our cattle except what old man Cockreil brings down 
from the mountains. He com.es down just as regular as the month 
of October comes and brings 75 to 100 half-scrub cattle and turns 
them into our front pasture and then rides up to the stile and takes 
off his bear-skin from his saddle and his saddle bags and goes on 
right into the house and on into Master's room without ever knock- 
ing at the door, and puts his saddle-bags in the first corner he 
comes to and throws his bear-skin down in front of the fire and 
falls down on it and sticks his feet with his moccasins on up to 
the fire and his old blue jeans huntin' shirt on, and if Mistis aint 
in there, maybe when she goes in there she will find the old man in 
there fast asleep. She calls him old Si, and when the old man 
wakes up she will say, 'How are you. Si? Pretty tired, I guess.' 
'Yes, Madam, I have been driving cattle ever since daylight and I 
am tired. Where is Squire Cunnigin?' 'I don't low he will git to 
see the cattle to-night.' And then the old man will turn over and 
go to sleep again and Mistress go on about her business just like he 
was not there; but when old Master comes in the old man will get 
up and stretch himself and get on a chair and go to talking. Then 
old Master, he will say, 'See you have been riding hard all day ; how 
would a little old whiskey go?' and the old man will jump up and 
say, 'Now Squire, if you say so, we will try that,' and they go in 
the other room to the side-board and when they come back that old 
man done forgot he v/as tired. Next morning they ride down 
among the old man's cattle for about an hour, and then the young 
man, Master Isaac, has to go to Lexington to the Bank to get 
silver money to pay for that old man's cattle. They say he won't 
take gold and he v/on't take paper money, so they have to take the 
old man's saddle-bags and bring him silver money. Sometimes he 
stays at our house two or three days before he starts home. They 
tell me that old man has got six or seven thousand acres of that 
mountain land and raises every one of them cattle. He has been 
bringing them cattle every year regular for eight or ten years." 

50 



(Riddle to Charles) "Charley, did you bring Mr. Clay up to 
our house that time when he and Mr. Webster and another gentle- 
man come up there, or did Aaron drive the carriage that day?" "I 
am the very fellow what drove the carriage that day when you all 
gave that big barbecue." (Riddle) "Well, what was that other 
gentleman's name?" "Wy, that was Mr. Pindexter (Poindexter). He 
was from down South somewhere and that was one of the biggest 
days I ever did see." (Riddle) "Well, I recon it was. About two 
days before that, Master called me up just before night and told me 
he wanted me and Jack to have the two carriage horses ready before 
breakfast to git away as soon as we got our breakfast, and he wanted 
to send us away on an errand, and he said, 'I'll tell you more in the 
morning, and ycu tell John and Josh to ask Mr. Webb what two 
horses they are to ride and they are to go as soon as they get their 
breakfast.' I knowed that somethin' was up and next mornin' he 
called me and Jack and he give me a note and Jack one, and he tell 
us, 'Mr. Clay and some more gentlemen will spend the day with me 
tomorrow, and this note is to invite all the gentlemen around here 
to come to our barbecue tomorrow. Now you take this note and 
go down by all the Cunninghams and Hutchcrafts, and on down the 
Paris Road as far as Mr. Brutus Clay's, and then cut across to Mr. 
King's and come back by Mr. Tom Cunningham's, and you tell your 
Master Tom to notify everybody around Clintonville, and you ask 
every gentleman you show this note to to please invite all of his 
neighbors to come ;' and he told Jack the same thing and he sent him 
half the way to Mt. Sterling, and told him to go by the Goff's and 
Gay's and Anderson's and Sphorr's and Judy's and on to Mr. Skin- 
ner's Mill, and then come back by the Gist's and Lewis' and Bean's, 
and back that way. Well, I believe he sent Big John out by the 
Harrison's and Fishback's, and Taylor's, and on down that way 
to the river, and then he come back by the Quisenberry's, and the 
Hampton's, and on up that way home. I think he must have sent 
Josh over to the Renick's, and after old man Fry. He was an old 
Frenchman and couldn't talk much like our people, but he could 
butcher a beef and carve a ham as well as any man that I ever did 
see, and when I got home that evening just before sun-down, don't 
yer know him and Mr. Webb had one of the very finest fat steers 
on the farm, all quartered and hanging up in the spring house; 
dressed as nice as ever you see a chicken, and I do believe that beef 
would have weighed 1500 pounds, and he was as fat as a hog. I 
reckon I showed my note to twenty people that day, and I got to 
Mr. King's just as his horn blowed for dinner and when he read the 
note he said, "Well, man, our dinner is about ready. You had 

51 



better give your horse a few 'years' of corn and come around to 
the kitchen and the cook will give you your dinner." So I took 
dinner with Mr. King and then come on up the road to Master 
Tom Cunningham's, and through Clintonville and by the Stepp's, 
and the last man I showed my note to was Gen'l Pendleton — about 
two miles frorh home. 

When I got home and see the big fat beef hanging in the spring 
house and the row of tables fixed along side of the locust grove 
about fifty yards, with cotton tacked all over it — then a long row 
of big kettles hanging on poles. Mistess has sent to the sugar 
camp and got the kettles out of the furnace, and then she had all 
of her wash kettles, and there must have been eight or ten kettles 
hanging in a row, and I could tell that meant soup for a big lot of 
people. They had put wood under all of them, and under two big 
kettles at the upper end of the row they had a big fire already burn- 
ing, and when I looked in I saw about a half dozen fine bacon hams 
cooking for tomorrow, and they had dug a ditch a little way from 
the kettles to barbecue the beef next day, and they had three or 
four wagon loads of wood ready to make the fire. Next morning 
early old man Fry was down in the grove cutting up that beef and 
fixing it for cooking and getting out the bones for soup. But I did 
not see anything more down there that day. Mistess called me and 
Jack before breakfast and said she wanted us to stay right at that 
kitchen door to wait on her and the women that were in the kitchen 
and dining room, and then Mistess was in both them places at the 
same time just as nigh as she could get, and when she was not giv- 
ing me and Jack orders, here would come Peggy and Lizzie and Cin- 
dy and Mandy, one right after tother, and every one of them giving 
orders, and they kept us both moving; and Mistess she went down 
to the soup kettles soon in the morning two or three times, and 
then between nine and ten o'clock she went down there agin and 
that time she took Jack with her and I did not see Jack no more 
that day, but she come back pretty soon and she and them women 
just kept me on the jump till about three o'clock. But just a little 
while after she come from down at the kettles that time she was 
going from the dining room to the kitchen and Mr. Clay came right 
in on the back porch from down towards the locust grove and met 
Mistess right at the kitchen door with her sleeves rolled up to her 
elbows and sich another hand-shaking and joking and laughing as 
they did have right at the kitchen door." (Charles) "Yes, Master 
told me down at the lower gate he would get out, and he opened 
that gate and then he told me to drive on up to the front stile and he 
went to the stable and then walked up through the locust grove and 

52 '- 



I did not see any more of him until I heard him on the front porch." 
(Riddle) "Well, sir, after he and Mistis had laughed and talked 
there a little while they went on in the dining room and she intro- 
duced him to some ladies in there, and after they talked a little 
while there she went with him on into her room and introduced 
him to a whole lot more in there, and after a little while I heard him 
talking louder than any of them out on the front porch. But there 
was sich yelling and hollering out there in front I could not tell 
what v/as going on. But Mistis come back before long and then 
she and them women kept me on the jump till about three o'clock 
before I got a mouth full of dinner. Then Liza beckoned to me at 
the dining room window and when I went there she handed me two 
great big plates full, one of them stacked up with roast beef and 
ham and bread and all kinds of vegetables they had in the house, and 
the other had pie and cake on it, and she told me to take a cup and 
go to that jar there and get some milk. Then I went out under the 
old locust tree in front of the kitchen door and there was some 
chairs out there. I put the plates on one chair and I got another, 
and you'd better believe I hid every scrap on them plates before I 
quit." (Charles) "Well, sir, when I got up to the stiles Capt. Cun- 
ningham and Gov. Clark and Squire Harrison and Major Moore and 
some other gentlemen, I did not know, come walking from the 
porch and met us at the stiles and when they found Master wa'nt 
there, some of them asked, 'Where is Mr. Clay?' and Mr. Webster 
said he got out at the lower gate and said he would walk up, and 
some of them said, 'He is playing a joke on us now!' But Capt. 
Cunningham said, 'He will turn up alright.' Come walk in gentle- 
men, and they all walked on up that pavement right through a 
big crowd of men, shaking hands and introducing all the way along 
from the stiles to the front porch, and that front yard was full of 
people and every once in a while they would smack their hands 
and holler, and about the time these gentlemen got-up to the front 
porch with Mr. Pindexter (Poindexter) and Mr. Webster here 
come Master out of the house with his hat off and when the people 
see him come out you never did hear such laughing and whooping 
and hallooing and smacking their hands, and then they were shak- 
ing hands and talking for a good while before these gentlemen 
went into the house, and then I drove my carriage around to that 
big tree out in the lot and there were horses hitched to every low 
limb on that tree, but I put my carriage right where the sun was 
going to throw the shade pretty soon and out of the way of the 
horses and then unhitched my horses and put them down in the 
stable, and when I crossed the branch I let them have all the water 

53 



they would drink before I got to the stable and then put them 
in two empty stalls where there was a rack of good hay, and I went 
over to the crib and got an armful of corn and give them six 
"years" apiece, and fixed them there all safe, and then I went up 
through the grove just like Master did, and when I got up close to 
where Mr. Webb and the hands were I heard one of the bo3-s say, 
'There is Mr. Clay's man,' and when Mr. Webb heard that he look- 
ed up and when he saw me said to me, 'Man, maybe you had better 
take this v/hile you have got a chance,' and he handed me a tin 
plate full of bread and a slice of ham and of beef and said, 'Just 
take a cup and go to one of those kettles and git a cup of soup,' 
and I thanked him and obeyed orders ; and about that time I 
heard somebody up toward the front calling loud, 'Come dov/n here, 
gentlemen, and git some dinner;' and in a few minutes you could 
not see that long table from one end of it to the other. The men 
were three deep or four deep on both sides. Well, when I got as 
much as I wanted to eat I begin to look around and I see a platform 
with about two dozen chairs on it, and I could see there v/as where 
the big men would be after dinner ; I went up around by that cane- 
patch — you know that platform was about sixty feet from the 
lower yard fence by the cane-patch and about the same distance 
from the upper end of the long table, and right at the upper end 
of the locust grove where most all of them were in the shade. So 
I set down on the ground right against the big corner post where 
all three of the post-and-rail fences come together in that big 
corner post, so I would git in nobody's way and could see and hear 
everything up on that platform; and it was not long before I could 
see Master and a lot of gentlemen coming dovv^n from the front 
porch, and then the crowd gathered around, and that post and rail 
fence on two sides of that platform had men sitting on it as thick 
as blackbirds git on a limb, and one big fat man got on that big 
corner post right over my head and stayed there most all the time 
they were speaking, and every once in a while he would holler as 
loud as an Indian. Master, he spoke first, for about an hour, and 
every once in a while the crowd v/ould holler so loud he would 
have to stop till they got done ; and after he quit then Mr. Web- 
ster spoke for more than half an hour, and they hollered over him 
about the same way, and then Mr. Pindexter he spoke for half an 
hour, and then a little bit of a man got up that would not weigh 
more than about 130 or 140 pounds and he had light colored hair 
and blue eyes, and he had no more show for beard than a woman, 
and I thought they must be mighty nigh done now, but I tell you 
that little man fooled me. He could out-talk any man of his size 

54 



that I ever did hear and they made as much fuss over his talk as 
any of them. He was from up about Mt. Sterlixng, and I think they 
called him Dick Menafee. Well, when he got done Gov. Clark, 
he got up and he kept that crowd laughing and whooping for a 
half an hour, telling jokes on Master and everybody that had been 
saying anything that day, and then the crowd broke up and I slipped 
over the fence and got my horses and hitched them to the car- 
riage, and Master and the other gentlemen were not ready to go 
for more than a half hour after that, but we got home before dark." 
(Spencer) "Riddle, wa'nt you in the army with Capt. Cun- 
ningham?" "Yes, I spent one mighty tough, hard winter 
upon them lakes. It is awful cold up there in the Vv'inter. I did 
not have much hard work to do. We had plenty of men to do the 
work . But it was so awful cold up there you had to keep close to 
the fire to keep from freezing. I did not have to go out much only 
to attend to our horses and get wood to keep a good fire and wait 
on Master. But he was cut more than I v^^as, but he wrapped up 
in his buffalo (buffalo overcoat) and overshoes so he could 
stand the ccld. Our company was not in but one big battle. They 
had some little fights and they called them skirmishes, but the 
battle of the River Raisen was a rousing big one and a lot of men 
were killed and wounded. We had some men of our company 
killed and one of our near neighbors, Mr. Frederick Stipp was 
badly wounded, and when they brought him into camp Master 
came with him and after the Doctor got through v/orking with 
him. Master told me to stay right with Mr. Stipp and take good 
care of him and do whatever Doctor told me to do for him, and 
then I didn't see anything more of Master for about two weeks, 
and by that time Mr. Stipp began to set up and hobble around a 
little, and when Master come back I went with him, and Mr. 
Stipp never did get in the company any more, and I never did 
see him until we come home, and he heard we had got home and 
he come down to see us, and he had come home before we did be- 
caused we stayed until the war was over. About a year after 
that Mr. Stipp's wife had a boy baby and he named him Isaac Cun- 
ningham, and that child growed up to be a fine man. When he was 
nine or ten years old he would ride on a horse along with his 
father, and Mr. Stipp would be going to town riding through our 
farm. Our place was right betv/een his house and town. When- 
ever Mr. Stipp would see me he would come to where I was and 
shake hands with me and have something to say. That boy al- 
ways called me Uncle Riddle, and he has got a brother named John 

55 



that was born before the war. He is a fine man, too, and treats 
me mighty well." 

Nov/ the foregoing is a fair sample of the kind of conversa- 
tion usually carried on and enjoyed by the more intelligent class of 
slaves when they met and had leisure hours, and they were the 
most contented as well as the most efficient and satisfactory class 
of labor on this earth up to the war of 1860, and this labor system 
was thoroughly in accord with God's plan as it is revealed in His 
holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament as it ever had been 
from the time that Noah left the Ark, through the days of Job on 
to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob — all through the patriarchal 
era, sanctioned by God's prophets and was the universal custom 
throughout the entire era of the rise and fall of the Roman 
Empire, which embraced the entire civilized world in its time 
and included the time of our Savior's sojourn upon the earth, 
and His apostles after Him, and sanctioned, upheld and indorsed 
by Jesus Christ, our Lord, and by His chosen, inspired foUov/ers 
after Him; a God-ordained relation, just as the marriage relation; 
and never was as much abused by the sins and wickedness of man 
as the latter always has been, as the innumerable cases of divorces 
throughout the world abundantly testify with their constantly 
varying wails of woe which come in a continual stream before the 
courts. No doubt, but that as mean men have owned slaves as ever 
have married a wife. But the wicked man loved his money and 
the slave was a part of his money and his love of money was at 
least a barrier, if not a shield and protection for the slave against 
his meanness, and besides this, the laws of the Commonwealth fur- 
nished full as much protection for the slave as it did for the wife. 

I believe the highest type of a man I have ever known or read 
of who is directly descended from Africa and an ex-slave is Rev. 
Wm. Shepherd. I have met him and heard him preach and am in- 
formed that he was born at Wanesborough, Va., and was educated 
at the Tuscaloosa School and Seminary for the education of men of 
his race, and he is a missionary to Africa and is devoting his best 
efforts for the elevation of those benighted heathen negroes to a 
knowledge of their Creator, and in the pursuit of what he considered 
his duty he went contrary to and conflicted with what King Leopold 
of Belgium considered his rights and best interests in a huge and 
profitable gum-rubber business, which the King is having con- 
ducted in that country. Shepherd did something which so aroused 
the King's indignation and wrath that he was arrested and the 
King appeared to be determined to "do him up," which the Chris- 
tian people of our Southern States soon heard of and it at once 

50 



raised such a furious excitement throughout the South that it soon 
spread to the reHgious people of the entire Union and this brought 
Uncle Sam "up standing" to his full height, and he finally lifted 
his big stick and held it so high that the shadow of it reached to 
Africa, and on to Belgium, and finally Uncle Sam spoke out in tones 
that were heard in Africa and in Belgium: "I say. King, that is 
my man you have got," and when Leopold heard that, he said to 
Shepherd, "You oan go," and then he went quietly and meekly 
back to earnest and faithful labor in the jungles, and I have some 
hope that in the providence of a merciful God he may be the means 
of saving the souls of some of those ignorant and benighted crea- 
tures ; but I believe he is sailing, as it were, against wind and tide 
in laboring among a people who need to be raised first by God's 
plan to a sufficient degree of intelligence to enable them to compre- 
hend the Divine truth which he so earnestly tries to teach them. 
While I have an abiding sympathy and tender regard for Shepherd 
and his life work, I am sadly certain that much the larger portion 
of the African negroes will be exterminated by the present process 
of civilization, instead of being civilized by God's plan, of which 
Shepherd and others in cur country are bright and shining ex- 
amples. But Shepherd is trying to follow in the footsteps of Paul, 
as Paul followed in the footsteps of our Lord and Master. Paul 
was arrested, tried, and finally killed by wicked government au- 
thority because of his faithful and persevering service of our Lord 
and Master. Shepherd was arrested by the authority of the little 
2 by 6 King, and but for the over-ruling providence of God in raising 
our big stick he might have met Paul's fate. 

Booker Washington's pedigree is much shorter back to the 
jungles of Africa and his ancestral mammy's degradation and 
heathenism than King George's is back to the lost tribes of Israel 
and to Abraham, the man that I have drawn on so largely for testi- 
mony in laying the foundation for slavery and the jurisdiction of it 
in this book, and Booker's pedigree is certainly as well authenticated. 
He says in his London interview that "None of us wish to go back to 
Africa," and we can but give him credit for worldly wisdom in this. 
"There would be no White House dinners there now." Mr. Roose- 
velt has come home and Booker does not wish to associate with 
the lions and tigers and elephants and such like, so there is very 
little left in Africa to attract him. We quote from the Leader 
(evening paper), taken from a two-column interview in the Lon- 
don Post — "The negro problem in the United States will right it- 
self in time, and the American negro has not the slightest desire 
to return to his ancestral Africa," and "England is a country that 

57 



people of my race hold in the highest esteem and reverence, on 
account of the noble part taken by the English people in the 
struggle for the abolition of slavery." Booker is correct about this, 
because it must be admitted by all who are acquainted with the 
truth of history that but for English influence and power, slavery 
would have been in full force to-day in America and Africa and 
most probably in both North and South America, and in many 
islands of the sea; and all of this testimony is the strongest that 
he could give to corroborate statements written in this book before 
he gave this interview, and we quote again from the same : "Wash- 
ington is the famous founder and principal of the Tuskegee, Nor- 
mal and Industrial Institute for students of the negro race in the 
state of Alabama," and again — "Mr. Washington, who has had an 
honorary degree conferred on him by the University of Harvard, 
and was received at the White House as an honored guest during 
the Presidency of Mr. Roosevelt, was born a slave, and his story 
is as inspiring as that of any of the heroes of Mr. Smiles' "Self 
Help" and may we add in parenthesis (they may be very much of 
the same character) but be that as it may, we quote from the same 
source: "The negro problem you know is the problem of the man 
'fartherest down,' and I want to ascertain at first hand hov/ the man 
v^'ho is farthest down in Europe lives and works, and I believe that 
when America comes to a more accurate understanding of the diffi- 
culties which the masses of the working people in other parts of the 
world have to struggle against, it will have gone far tov/ards solv- 
ing v/hat is called the race problem." Just how Booker is to solve 
his problem by seeing how the "Italian Hobo" and the "Polish 
Jew" live in their native land, we confess, is beyond cur imagina- 
tion, because we know that both of these classes which he desig- 
nates as "farthest dov/n" are flocking to our country by the mil- 
lions to better their condition, which is known to be far worse in 
their native land than the masses of the Southern negro is, even 
after deducting the few hundreds of those who are v/ell-to-do, even 
now after freedom, and we all know that this class is far worse off 
now than when they had their owners to feed and clothe and pro- 
tect them, and would be much worse off now than they are but for 
the philanthropic sympathy and interest still lingering in their 
former owners and their children for them ; and this is a very good 
explanation and reason for Booker's statement, "That they prefer 
to remain in their own Southland." But here is one other quota- 
tion that I must not fail to put in: "In Scotland, by the way, I 
shall pay a visit to Mr. Carnegie at Skibo Castle to-night." Booker 
has one characteristic of the negro fully developed as any man of 

58 



his race that I ever read of. From my early youth I have known 
and frequently seen demonstrated that peculiar contempt mingled 
vi^ith pity, with which the "rich man's" slave negro estimated what 
that negro regarded as "poor white folks" and the reverse of that 
sentiment is just as prominent. But here is another quotation 
from the same paper of a later date which puts the capstone on the 
pedestal of Booker's glory: "HONORS — showered upon Booker 
T. Washington at capital of Denmark, Copenhagan, Oct. 4, '10 
King Frederick yesterday received Booker T. Washington, and 
conversed at length with him on the subject of the colored race. 
His Majesty asked the American for a copy of one of his publica- 
tions. Later, as the guest of prominent Danes, Mr. Washington 
motored to Roskilde, the old capital, where he visited a school and 
had lunch. Last night he dined at the palace, meeting the mem- 
bers of the royal family, including Queen Mother Alexandra, the 
widow of King Edward of England." 

Booker Washington is the shrewdest and most practical man of 
the "world-kind" of any ex-slave or man from African descent that 
I have ever read of. He uses his politics to as great an advant- 
age for Booker as any of our loyal men of the South during that 
old war ever used theirs to their very best financial interest and 
for their own glory. Booker manipulated his politics to secure 
him a big White House dinner, and then used that circumstance to 
get higher up from that time on, and finally to obtain an inter- 
view with a London paper, and then another big dinner v/ith the 
Royalty of Europe. It would be hard to find the record of a 
Southern man, during the old war which can beat that for glory. 
And besides all this. Prof. Washington is deeply interested in 
skimming the cream off the rising generation of his race and mak- 
ing all out of them that he can for himself and for them, and after 
he skims what he can, if all the balance goes into the pig-trough to 
be consumed by the hogs the Professor cannot be held responsible 
for that. 

Taken, all in all. Shepherd and Washington are a long way 
the highest and brightest trophies left from African slavery in 
America. But besides these two there may be several hundred 
others who are as well, or better off than they would have been 
as slaves; and then after these, what about the millions as the 
Professor puts it — "furtherest dov/n" and I fear continually getting 
further down? Are they to be left in the trough and exterminated 
in an unequal contest with the millions of foreign labor which is 
pouring in a constant stream like a flood into our country? Is 
this the blessing that freedm brought them? But before Prof. 

59 



Washington gets to his work with them we will see what the 
Southern people are doing for the rising generation of the negro 
race ; and then Washington skims the cream off of this. I give the 
following, taken from our daily paper here in Lexington, and it is 
but a fair sample of what is done in nearly all the former slave 
states and nowhere else: 

"COLORED TEACHERS INDORSE PROVISION FOR 
EDUCATION OF THEIR RACE. 



INSTITUTE CONVENES. 



Superintendent Mrs. Nannie G. Faulconer and Others are 

Thanked. 



We desire to thank our honorable superintendent, Mrs. Nannie 
G. Faulconer, for the interest she has manifested in the negro schools 
of Fayette County and also for the many suggestions and good ad- 
vice she has given us during the session of the teacher's institute. 
We also desire to thank Prof. E. H. Clarke, Rev. E, L. Bakerville 
and Rev. G. V. Morris for the very excellent addresses they gave 
before the institute. 'All children regardless of race, creed, sex 
or social station or economic conditions of their parents, have 
equal rights to and should have equal opportunity for such educa- 
tion as will develop to the fullest possible degree all that is best 
in their individual natures, and fit them for the duties of life and 
citizenship in the age and community in which they live. We 
indorse the accepted policy of the states of the South in providing 
educational facilities for the negro youth, believing that whatever 
the ultimate solution of this grievous problem may be, education 
must be an important factor in that solution. We believe that 
the education of the negro in the elementary branches of education 
should be made thorough, and should include specific instruction in 
hygiene and home sanitation for the protection of both races. We 
believe that in the secondary education of the negro youth em- 
phasis should be placed on the subject of agriculture, the indus- 
trial occupations including nurse-training, domestic science, and 
home economics. We urge upon school authorities universally 
the importance of adequate buildings, comfortable seating and 
sanitary school accommodations for the negro youth. We believe 
that the better education the negro has, the better citizen he will 
make. Therefore we advocate the higher education of the ambit- 
ious and deserving negro. We advocate the all-around education 

GO 



— the education of the heart, hand and brain.' The resolutions are 
signed by L, W. Taylor, Laura Bogan, G. S. Johnson, Resolution 
Committee. Following are the names of the teachers in attendance 
at the institute: Birdie Taylor, Laura Bogan, Emma Whitley, 
Mildred Hill, Susie H. Johnson, Helena Turner, Mary E. Graves, 
Clara Howe, Mattie Caldwell, Edna Munda, Leon Smith, Fannie 
Jackson, Margaret Upshaw, Anna Jones, L. W. Taylor, B. C. Green, 
B. D. Black, T. S. Johnson, J. H. Johnson and Emma Clayborne." 

Now all of this is from the spontaneous sympathy, kind feel- 
ing and interest, felt by the former owners and their children for 
the former slaves and their children in an earnest and unselfish 
effort to advance and elevate them in the scale of civilization and 
intelligence. You see no special effort of this kind in behalf of 
the Italian immigrant or the polish Jew or any other class in our 
country who are little, if any, higher grade of civilization than the 
negro after slavery. Nor do you see in the northern or western 
states, where African slavery never existed, any especial effort 
made in behalf of the negro. But in their minority and weakness 
among the whites they are left to "sink or swim," "survive or per- 
ish" in a contest with a large majority of those who have a jealous 
antipathy and prejudice against them, and with their former pro- 
tection and shield clean gone they are left to their fate, which is 
gradual extermination — the final result of emancipation. 

But there is another man who has recently had his name fre- 
quently in the papers, and he calls himself Jack Johnson, and must 
be a very stout, able-bodied man, just such as fifty years or more 
ago would have sold for a good deal of money for practical and use- 
ful purposes, and could no doubt have been taught to break more 
than 300 lbs. of hemp per day, which would have made his labor 
worth more than $3.00 per day ; but has now become the champion 
prize fighter of America, if not of the world, and has recently whip- 
ped the white man at that game of scientific brutality, and by this 
great feat the papers say he has made enough money to buy a 
$60,000 residence on Tony-Row in New York City, right among 
the aristocracy and millionaires of the city, and now of course he 
is no "nigger," and if not, then what is he? I suppose he is just a 
"What is it?" But this great victory he has gained has made him 
a hero to receive the great admiration of a large majority of his 
race, and so excited them in many localities where there were large 
colonies of them that they became so boisterous and demonstrating 
and insulting to the whites in their vicinity that they raised riots 
and commotions which terminated in violent death of not a few 
of the negroes and some whites, and required the strong arm of 

61 



the law to suppress. In Philadelphia and Pittsburg and Ohio and 
Illinois and many others of the Western and Southern States there 
were more than twenty of these disturbances chronicled in one 
weekly paper immediately following the fight which took place at 
Reno, Nevada, and this is unmistakably a convincing testimony 
as to the trend and tendency of a very large majority of the race. 
But here is another hero of a much darker hue that we chronical 
with sorrow and dismay as still stronger proof of the certain doom 
to final extermination of the race in this country, because we know 
this is no rare exception, but only a sample of such as you find al- 
most daily in the papers : 

"NEGRO KILLED AFTER HE SHOOTS POSSEMEN. 



One of His Pursuers Dead, Two Fatally Hurt and Five 
Others Injured. 



MOB DRAGS BODY. 



Chief of Police is Finally Successful in Getting the 
Corpse to Morgue. 



(By Associated Press.) 

Huntington, W. Va., Oct. 14 — Two persons were killed, two 
fatally wounded and five others seriously wounded in a fight for the 
capture of George, alias "Red Johnson," a fugitive negro. He shot 
and probably fatally wounded Detective George Lentz when the 
latter attempted to place him under arrest, and shot seven members 
of the posse before being taken dead. 

The dead are George Bias, railroad brakeman, and member of 
the posse, and George Johnson, the negro fugitive. The fatally 
wounded are: Charles Hale, shot through the lungs; George 
Lentz, detective, shot through the back. 

The seriously wounded are: W. W. Lowe, policeman, shot 
through left side; Charles Stuart, shot in the head; G. D. Thomas, 
shot through the arm; William Hutchison, shot through the arm; 
Ira Harold, shot in the leg. 

After fatally shooting Lentz the negro escaped into the hills 
back of the city and barricaded himself in a cliff where he defied 
arrest. A posse led by blood hounds soon trailed the negro. When 
he saw the posse approaching the negro opened fire and Charles 
Hale, who was following the hounds, was shot. 

63 



A moment later George Bias fell with a bullet through his head. 
The posse retreated to wait reinforcements. When it advanced 
the second time Johnson opened fire. During the battle Chief of 
Police Clingenpeel climbed to the top of the cliff where the negro 
was barricaded, and getting the drop on him, shot him dead. The 
body rolled out into view and a mob dragged it down the hill to 
the city limits. Chief Clingenpeel addressed the crowd, which ap- 
parently was bent on mutilating the body, and succeeded in getting 
it to the morgue. " 

The negro had been shot nine times. Little is known here of 
his identity. He is said to have come from Virginia, and to have 
had a brother killed by the officers at Williamson, W. Va,, last Jan- 
uary." 

This desperado now enlists the unbounded and idolatrous ad- 
miration of a very large majority of his race, and is a fair sample 
of negroes of which Mrs. Beecher Stowe and others wrote such 
hair-raising, and dreadful accounts of the bloodhounds and the 
cat-o-nine-tails, but if he had been a slave he would have had no gun 
but would have found his place where he would have done six 
honest days work during nearly every week in the year, and would 
have been made useful, if not ornamental, and in all probability 
would never have killed any man and would never have been 
killed. 

This book contains certainly abundant testimony to prove to 
and satify any rational and unprejudiced mind who is willing to 
accept God's Word as contained in His holy scriptures, as credible 
truth ; that slavery as it was organized and instituted in the South- 
ern States of this Union prior to 1860, was divinely instituted, and 
if so, consistent with God's general arrangement for the civilization 
and elevation of the entire human race in the best possible way, 
from the condition which at that time they were in to the highest 
degree of civilization attainable for each several branch of the 
human race. 

The owner of the slave, as a rule belonged, of course, to the 
higher type and class of civilization, and because of this owner- 
ship of the slave was not compelled from necessity to perform 
the daily manual labor and drudgery, and could therefore bestow 
the entire time of life to the cultivation and expansion of intellect 
and mental development, while the very fact of this ownership 
carried with it as a general rule a rural and out-of-door country 
life, conducive all the more to the fullest physical as well as mental 
development and the highest type of humanity. 

63 



While the African race, as slaves, from the time they v/ere 
brought from their degradation ("The man lowest down," as Booker 
Washington has well said) — in the five to eight generations through 
which they have come up, have made full as much advance in the 
scale of civilization and intelligence, because they were brought 
in accord with God's plan — "The Way of Wisdom." And the 
Esquimo and other tribes of little, if any, higher grade of humanity 
than the original African negro, could have been just as well 
brought up in the same way from their degradation, to have made 
efficient and very valuable labor instead of leaving them in their 
degradation for extermination by small-pox and filth, in dense 
ignorance, while being continually driven back further and yet 
further North into continually more miserable and horrible con- 
ditions by Satan's plan of civilization. 

We are curious to know v;hat disposition will be made of this 
subject by quite a large number of intelligent Christian people, 
not confined to the Northern and Western portions of our country, 
but throughout the world, who have been brought up to condemn 
African slavery as it existed before 1860, just on general princi- 
ples and without any regard for God's precepts or plans and a 
large majority of these people have never heard or read anything 
in regard to this institution except condemnation. What will they 
do with it? They dare not go to the Bible because if they do 
they will find nothing there to condemn it. It is as much a God- 
ordained institution as marriage. They are compelled to close 
that book and ignore its precepts while they seek elsewhere for 
testimony with which to condemn it; or better still, just laugh 
the case out of court or ignore it altogether. "Nero fiddles while 
Rome burned," but the fiddle did not put the fire out — It burned 
out. 

There were, perhaps, more than a million of Eskimo 100 years 
ago, which were excellent material of which to make slaves, as well 
adapted to the Northern and Northwestern States of this country 
as the African negro was for the Southern and Southwestern States, 
and for a large part of South America and the tropical Islands, and 
away on toward -the South Pole, there were no doubt just as suit- 
able material in every respect for slaves which could have been 
just as well adapted to the colder portions of the Southern hemis- 
phere; and if God's wisely devised plan for the civilization and 
propogation of these heathen had been adhered to to this day, 
there would not have been a heathen of this kind and character on 
this earth by this time, but instead there would have been, as there 
was when the Roman Empire was in the zenith of its prosperity and 

64: 



glory, about as many slaves as free citizens in the "New World," 
and the slaves would have been as contented and happy, and as 
efficient and satisfactory labor as the Southern slaves were in 1858 
and before that time. 

One hundred years ago there were at least one million Esqui- 
mos in our North country, including Greenland, and they have 
been pressed North, and still further North by the Satanic process 
of civilization and extermination, until now from the best informa- 
tion that can be obtained there are less than ten thousand of them 
left, and this remnant still in their degradation of heathenish 
filth and ignorance; when there should have been 20 millions of 
able-bodied, efficient slave laborers in Northern and Western 
States of this country from these people, and every one of them 
would have heard and known of the omnipotent God that created 
them and this world, and many of them would have been faithful 
followers of Our Lord and their Redeemer, and all of this would 
have been in strict accord with God's plan for having the "heathen 
for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His 
possession." 

Somebody, and some nation, is more or less responsible for 
this dereliction and wickedness. By this day, with the increase of 
the output of gold in the world, there would have been at least 
twenty-five million millionaires and one-half millionaires and one- 
quarter millionaires in the United States, besides many millions 
more would have owned and lived on their farms with their slaves 
and their estates worth from $25,000 to $100,000, and one-third of 
their estate would have consisted of slaves, and about one-third in 
real estate, and the balance in money and luxuries, and these men 
of affluence would have resided upon the landed estates, scattered 
broadcast over this country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, 
and from the Gulf to the ice-bound North, and there would not have 
been a man within the bounds of this slave country worth one-third 
as much as Jno. D. Rockefeller, and New York City and Chicago, 
or any of these large cities, would have contained not more than 
one-half of the population which they now have, because a much 
larger part of the wealth and affluence would have been on the 
farms. And as it was throughout the slave States before they 
were freed, so it would be now — you could travel in an automobile, 
or a vehicle, or on horseback, from Maine to California, and from 
the Gulf to the Northern boundary of our country, and have com- 
fortable lodging at a country residence every night, with a good 
square meal night and morning, without one cent of cost, and this 
would be considered only customary hospitality to "entertain 

65 



strangers" according to our Lord's command, and according to the 
universal custom throughout the slave States before 1860 — and 
that horrid Civil War. 

"A war that emancipated one race and impoverished another; 
that uprooted a whole civilization, involving vaster consequences 
than follow the fall of a dynasty or the wreck of an empire. It 
was the 'about face' of a continent and of an age. It was the con- 
vulsive roar of a thousand unchained thunders. Four years of a 
war that startled the laughing waters of peace into an incarna- 
dined flood equal to centuries of schooling," which paralyzed the 
highest type of civilization that was in this world, and wiped out 
and destroyed the Divinely planned, and most consistently wise 
system of labor that has ever been or ever can be devised for man, 
because it was God-given and destroyed by Satan's strategy. "But 
the surrender at Appomattox was not to be the close of this dreadful 
drama." Far worse was to come — "the half has not been told." 
"The horrors of 'Reconstruction' were at hand. The war closed, 
indeed, but it closed in colors of a stormy sunset, to be followed on 
the morrow by black clouds of poverty banked up in mountains and 
shot through with red streaks of crime and murder." "Appomattox 
was the brook Kedron over which the South passed to a Geth- 
semane of Horrors — eight years of them, where every landscape 
v/as marred by ruins, where every breath of air was a lament and 
every home a house of mourning." But after malice and greed had 
been satiated there still remained the indestructible and unquench- 
able blood and breeding transmitted from the ancestry of 1776 to 
1781, who had thrown off the tyrant's yoke of oppression then and 
planted the indestructible seed of liberty and equity which sprang 
up afresh through the ashes that remained from the conflagration 
of malice and greed which had swept like a beasum of destruction 
over cur beloved Southland and left but the ashes. And now when 
fifty years have not yet passed after all of this, it is to-day the 
fairest and m.ost prosperous portion of this, the greatest nation on 
earth, with less turmoil and strife between capital and labor than 
any other section or country. But it is only a question of time when 
the negro labor which is continually retrograding and becoming 
less efficient, may finally become more unscrupulous and anarchi- 
cal than the other while it is being superseded and absorbed as fate 
has decreed that it shall be. 

As I have said before, the institution of marriage was devised 
by infinite wisdom the same as the institution of slavery to bless 
and elevate mankind and to serve as one of the principal bulwarks 
to protect and advance the highest and best interests of humanity 

G6 



in all ages, and it is a remarkable fact that throughout the Bible, but 
especially the New Testament, when one of these institutions is 
referred to the other is almost invariably associated in the same 
chapter together. Satanic strategy has abolished one and badly 
shattered the other, and now if it were possible for his majesty to 
wipe out the other he would have this old world in a condition 
which should satiate at least for a time his majesty's most fiendish 
desires, and there is no doubt that the institution of marriage has 
always been much more abused and has now vastly more excuse 
and cause for its abolition than could ever have been justly brought 
against the God-devised plan of heathen slavery — the divorce. Mills 
that are continually grinding out their interminable grist of separa- 
tion and termination of the marriage relation throughout our coun- 
try, and in fact throughout the world, is overwhelming testimony 
of this, to say nothing of the hundreds and thousands of the con- 
stantly occurring murders of wives by husbands and husbands by 
wives. To verify what has been written here we give the follow- 
ing well-authenticated statistics produced by Prof. Elwood of Mis- 
souri : 

"DANGER TO THE NATION. 

Columbia, Mo., Nov. 2. — Charles A. Ellwood, professor of 
sociology at the University of Missouri, figures that at the present 
rate of increase of divorces, before the end of the century one out 
of every two marriages will result in divorce. He has figures to 
show the rapid increase that has been made. In 1885 American 
courts granted 25,000 divorces, as against 24,000 for all the rest of 
the v,7orld. In forty years, therefore, the divorce increase has been 
three times as great as the population increase. 

The ratio of divorce and marriage in America now, he says, 
is one to twelve. In France it is one to every twenty-five ; in Ger- 
many one to every forty, and in England one to every four 
hundred. 

In Missouri, according to the professor's statistics, one divorce 
is granted to every eight marriages. In the State of Washington 
there is one divorce to every four marriages. In Colorado and 
Montana the ratio is one to five, and in Texas, Oklahoma and In- 
diana is one to six." 

If Satan could bring as powerful political lever to bear upon 
this institution of marriage as he wielded against African slavery 
he could very soon bring on more strife and bloody carnage and 
chaos than he did in the other struggle, but thank God, we have 
in His blessed book one assurance as to this that we did not have 

67 



as to the other — it assures us that there will be marrying and giving 
in marriage here when Christ returns in glory to reign upon this 
earth, and if there could be placed upon our National statute book 
one plain, short, iron-clad law, and have it rigidly enforced upon 
the rich who marry the titled aristocracy as strictly as on the com- 
mon people it would reduce the number of divorces in this country 
a good deal more than half. 

Just make it a penal offense for either party to a divorce to 
marry while the other party is still living, and if this law was 
rigidly enforced it would prove a great blessing to our nation. But 
if Satan could just give this old world free love as thoroughly as 
he has given us free labor this would surely satiate his majesty 
for a time at least. 

To find a chapter in the Word of God which bears forcibly on 
this whole subject and at the risk of recapitulation, let's go back 
to Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, 6th chapter; and remember, he 
addressed this epistle to a slave-owning people, and to all who 
should come after, from that time until the second coming of 
Christ. The first four verses of this chapter are addressed to 
parents and children, and then in the same strain and as of the 
same importance, commencing with the 5th verse, "Servants, be 
obedient to them that are your masters, according to the flesh, with 
fear and trembling in singleness of your hearts as unto Christ." 
And 8th verse, "Knowing that whatsoever good thing a man doeth 
the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bound or free." 
9th verse, "And ye masters do the same thing unto them (your 
slaves), forbearing, threatening, knowing that your master also is 
in Heaven, neither is there respect of persons with Him." And 
then in the 10th verse he refers to parents and children, masters 
and slaves, all alike, who love the Lord, Jesus Christ, and accept 
Him as their Lord and Master — "Finally, my brethren, be strong in 
the Lord, and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor 
of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." 
And then mark well this 12th verse, "For we wrestle not against 
flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against 
the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
ness in high places (with Satan as Commander in Chief), whereof 
take unto you the whole armor of God that ye may be able to with- 
stand in the evil day, and having done all to stand." Then the 16th 
and 17th verses, "Above all, taking the shield of faith wherewith ye 
shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take 
the helmet of Salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the 
word of God." Taking the shield of faith — in other words, accept- 

G8 



ing the Word of God with implicit confidence as truth and right- 
eousness, and in preference to any other way; then by this means 
you shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked, that is, ye 
shall overcome and vanquish all of the machinations and strategy 
of Satan, and with this helment of Salvation wisely and practically 
used by the civilized world it would have been a shield for a tem- 
poral as well as it is for a Spiritual and eternal Salvation, and the 
sword of the Spirit (the Word of God) should have been an effect- 
ive and sufficient weapon with which to defend, protect and main- 
tain the right, which is God's way, if all of God's people had stood 
together to maintain His way. But Satan's strategy and the tares 
that he sowed throughout the greater part of the civilized world 
appears to have deceived quite a large number of even God's elect. 

There might be many other passages of Holy Scripture brought 
to the support of what has here been written, perhaps fully as 
strong as what has been used, but considering this subject already 
so thoroughly based upon Bible truth, and so well supported by 
God's Word, we consider further proof unnecessary. 

The Bible is the inspired word of God, and besides this if any- 
thing further imaginable could be needed — no book has been so 
severely tested, so thoroughly investigated, so closely scrutinized. 
It has been tried by every possible test. If there were anything 
bad about the Bible we would have found it out long ago. After 
all of these trials and tests we may still say of it, "Forever, Oh Lord, 
is thy Word established." The Bible proves itself by what it has 
done, by the way in which it has been preserved, by its teachings, 
and by its influence on the world. For these reasons without 
naming any others all rational human beings should without hesi- 
tation or doubt accept God's Holy Book as' true and righteous al- 
together. 

"Righteousness exalteth a Nation, but sin is a reproach to any 
people." 

Righteousness consists in obedience to God's laws and giving 
due heed to His admonitions and council. 

"Sin is any wont of conformity unto or transgression of the 
laws of God." The laws of God as well as His admonitions and 
council are contained in the Scriptures which are recorded in the 
Bible which consists of the Old and New Testament. 

A Nation's righteousness invariably brings its own reward of 
prosperity, peace and happiness to its people. National sin just 
as certainly brings punishment of strife, adversity, distress and 
misery to its people. The Ruler of Nations as well as of mankind 

69 



and of all His creation "will not be mocked, neither will He restrain 
His wrath and anger forever." 

When I have already abundant testimony and facts to fully 
and clearly set forth and establish all I wish to do in this "DEAD 
ISSUE," an incident is recorded in the evening daily paper which 
adds unquestionable and overwhelming additional proof of what 
has been written. The following incident shows that there were 100 
canoes with 50 stout, able-bodied men in each, of low, degraded 
heathen cannibals, who by this day, according to God's command: 
"Get your slaves from among the heathen," should have been, in- 
stead of running naked in these primeval jungles, like jackals and 
panthers, with a craving desire to eat a fat Englishman for a very 
rare and dainty meal, should have been the property of some intelli- 
gent enterprising Anglo-saxon— a part of his estate, "his money," 
comfortably clad and well fed on beef, pork, corn and beans, and 
other substantial and healthy food, and doing a reasonable day's 
work six days out of nearly every seven ; in reclaiming that wilder- 
ness of wealth and beauty in Africa and making it an agricultural 
paradise to vie with our own lovely Southland, both for beauty and 
for profit, and while doing all this being elevated according to God's 
infinitely wise plan to civilization and a knowledge of the only living 
and true God in the only practical way by which this could be done. 
The clipping referred to follows : 

"WILD MEN ATTACK GROUNDED VESSEL BUT ARE 
REPULSED WHEN CREW TURNS ON THE HOSE. 



New York, May 8, 1911 — After fighting off one hundred war 
canoes full of cannibals while aground on a coral reef at the Womazi 
Islands, German East Africa, the British steamship Kasenga has ar- 
rived here. 

From the day she sailed from New York, many months ago, 
with a cargo of 100 mules and five locomotives until she reached 
Sandy Hook on her return the Kasenga's voyage was one long ser- 
ies of thrilling adventures. 

While proceeding along the coast of German East Africa the 
Kasenga ran aground on January 28th. It was raining and foggy 
and Chief Officer Wooster did not get bearings until he saw a coral 
reef sticking out of the water. The reef was between two of the 
Womazi Islands. The Islands were apparently uninhabited, but 
Wooster found them to be filled with birds and game. 

Half an hour before high tide 100 war canoes with naked canni- 
bals paddled toward the Kasenga. Each canoe held 50 men. On 

70 



these islands the crew and passengers of a French mail boat were 
clubbed to death ten years ago. 

The crew of the Kasenga lined up with high pressure steam 
hose. Of the 57 men aboard 44 were Malays, and they became panic 
stricken as soon as they saw the cannibals. 

When the cannibals were within ten feet of the Kasenga, the 
hose was turned on them. The scalding steam drove the savages 
out of reach, where they held a parley. Then they scattered and 
commenced to row down the Kasenga from all directions. The tide 
was full by this time and at the second attack the freighter's 
engines began to turn, and she slowly moved out into deep water, 
and was quickly clear of the reef. Then with steam pouring from 
many hose onto the canoes the Kasenga escaped from the canni- 
bals." 

But for Satan's tares and strategy there v/ould not have been a 
naked degraded heathen negro on the Continent of Africa, nor on 
this earth by this good day, but instead there would have been many 
millions of well-clothed, well-fed, civilized, useful, and happy 
negroes, the property of intelligent, .enterprising, .God-serving 
ov/ners, who would be rapidly converting Africa from its state of 
nature to an Eden of beauty and profitable plantations; while the 
gold and diamonds and as yet hidden and unheard of treasurers of 
that continent would be only a small part of the real wealth of that 
country, and that, as well as this country, should have been by this 
good day dotted all over with school houses and to be used five 
days of each week for school children and cleaned up on the 6th 
day, and used on the 7th day for a Church to give the slaves the 
gospel as it is recorded in the Bible; and all of this would have 
been in accord with God's wisely devised plans and purposes and we 
would never have heard of a strike in Africa or America. 

In the autumn and winter of 1851-2 when I was in the eighteenth 
year of my age I attended Hanover College in Indiana, for one 
term, with eight or ten youths from Kentucky. We were known as 
the Southern delegation, all boarded at the same house, and were 
rather shunned by a majority of the other students and looked upon 
as a squad of slave-drivers; while we felt quite confident that we 
were the piers of any of them, and decidedly superior to any 
ignoramus who did not know that by all of the laws of God and man 
we had as much right to own our negroes as they had to own their 
horses or any other property. 

But we did not by any means realize the effective work which 
the Uncle-Tom-Cabin literature and the fanatical political stump 
oratory was having with the Bible, then already closed and its pre- 

71 



cepts ignored. My few month's stay at that college opened up to 
me a considerable revelation, but of course I could not realize that 
it was possible for the constitution and laws of our country and the 
laws of the Almighty God could be fanatically ignored and trampled 
under foot without scrupple, and we basked in our own imagined 
security, and lost no sleep in serious contemplation of what was so 
soon to follow. 

The Whig and Democratic parties were at that time in a des- 
perate struggle for supremacy, with the then insignificant Republi- 
can party just budding, and not sufficient to receive serious con- 
sideration from the public at large. But ten years after that the 
young giant had devoured what was left of the Whig party and we 
all know what followed. 

To-day this "Socialist" party, or whatever you choose to call it, 
is fully as much developed and as far advanced as the Republican 
party was in 1851 ; and at that time there were no telephones ; or 
flying-ships ; and even electricity, nitro-glycerine, and many other 
implements for destruction of life and property were not half as 
much developed as they are to-day. Far be it from me to assume 
the role of a pessimist, much less a prophet; I only give the facts 
and the reader can draw the conclusion. I am not authorized to 
assume the role of Jonah to Ninevah. 



72 



THE LIVE ISSUE. 



THIS LIVE ISSUE is the most vital, the most intricate, the 
most world-wide, the livest issue before the civilized world, and it 
is impossible for any or all human wisdom to make a permanent 
settlement and a quietus of this issue. This strife between Capital 
and Labor is the "Live Issue of the World," and so long as the 
"Love of moneip is the root of all evil" this will continue to be a 
"Live Issue" despite the most strenuous and utmost efforts of 
human wisdom to reconcile this strife or make a permanent settle- 
ment of the Issue. And more than this, despite the most strenuous 
and earnest efforts of government and all the wisdom of man the 
strife will continue to grow more bitter and the issue more irre- 
concilable as the laboring classes along with the rest of the world 
advance in civilization, education and general intelligence and the 
love of money continues to be "the root of all evil." It appears that 
with serious consideration these statements should become self- 
evident, but if we prefer to live in doubt and hope then when we 
look back through the past fifty years, since Bible slavery was abol- 
ished and observe the rapid growth of strikes and the continually 
increasing bitterness and strife between Capital and Labor and in- 
vestigate the cause and effect, then the last lingering hope and doubt 
will vanish and so far as all human effort can reach, leaves nothing 
but despair. 

When we get down to the bottom facts and foundation for 
all of this strife, brushing aside all sophistry and subterfuge, it is 
because the controlling powers and governments have been be- 
guiled by Satan to disregard God's W^ord as it is plainly set forth 
in the Bible, and to set aside and ignore the statutes, the advice, the 
admonition and the wise council of the most High God, and have 
undertaken to make an improvement upon God's way and instead 
of getting their "slaves from among the heathen" that are "lowest 
down," and so low that they require subjection to slavery according 
to God's plan to elevate their mental capacity sufficiently to 
enable them to comprehend the truths contained in God's Word 
sufficiently to give them a saving knowledge of God and a crucified, 
risen, and everliving Redeemer. This, God's plan, was one of propa- 
gation and elevation for this class of human beings, which, when 
thus brought up constituted the best, the most contented, and in 

75 



every way the most satisfactory class of labor in the world. But 
instead of this, Satan's plan is gradual, yet certain extermination 
for these human beings with a constant effort on the part of greed 
and the "love of money" to make serfs, far worse than slaves, of 
any and all who from any cause or misfortune may be compelled to 
subsist by daily manual, or menial labor, though the laborer in 
many instances may be the superior, both mentally and morally of 
the employer who strives to get the greatest amount of labor for 
the smallest amount of money and with no concern whatever for 
the prosperity, health or life of the laborer, and the laborer tries 
to get just as much for his labor as he possibly can and has just as 
ardent love for his dollars as the employer has for his hundreds and 
thousands of dollars. If the laborer has only $20, $50 or $100, or a 
few hundreds of dollars, whatever it may be, it is his entire estate, 
little as it may be and he prizes it just as highly as the employer 
prizes his thousands or hundreds of thousands, which is his entire 
estate, and while the employer needs the labor to conduct his busi- 
ness and the laborer is compelled to give labor to procure an honest 
and comfortable living, there is no interest common to both em- 
ployer and employee sufficiently strong to make a barrier or con- 
geniality which will counteract or overcome that "Love of money" 
which is common to both, as much a "root of evil" in one as in the 
other a constant source of interminable strife between capital and 
labor, which will continue as long as the "Love of money is the 
root of all evil," and will continue to become more and still more 
serious as each party to the contest increases in strength and power 
by additional combinations. 

The most casual observer can but be impressed with the gravity 
and serious importance of this matter when we can seldom look 
through a daily newspaper without finding some reference to, or 
account of one or more strikes of more or less serious import, and 
within less than one year there might be hundreds of clippings from 
the daily press such as the following few which are copied, and 
this first one refers to one which occurred in London years ago, and 
has gone down in history as the "Haymarket tragedy" — fearful to 
contemplate, but since that time many have occurred which were 
little, if any, less shocking, yet of so frequent occurrence that the 
world has become so accustomed to them that except to those in 
the immediate vicinity of the occurrence they have comparatively 
lost their terror and their shock; so much the more sad is this to 
contemplate. 

76 



"Lexington Herald, Nov. 3, 1910. 
GRIM SPECTERS OF HAYMARKET RIOTS IN CHICAGO. 



Inspector and Squad of 60 Policemen Charge Strikers With Drawn 
Revolvers in City's Streets. 



Fifteen Seriously Injured in Clash, Bleeding Heads and Faces 

Numerous. 



Manufacturer's Plant Attacked. 



While this strike vjas on about 10,000 women garment-makers 
joined in and the result was the following: 

"FIVE THOUSAND BABIES OF STRIKERS STARVING. 



Chicago Situation Arouses Committee Which Meets at Hull House. 



Chicago, Nov. 27. — The citizens strike committee, which has 
investigated the conditions in the families of the striking garment 
workers, reported to-day that 5,000 babies were starving here as a 
result of the labor war. The report was made at a meeting at Hull 
House and a special babies' milk fund was started at once by mem- 
bers of the committee. Estimates at the meeting show it would 
take at least $100 a day to provide milk for the babies in actual 
want, and the suffering appeared so great that $1,100 was contri- 
buted by members of the committee. The fund is to be kept distinct 
from other strikers' funds. The garment strike is no nearer settle- 
ment than it was a week ago, according to reports of the unions, and 
both sides have settled down for a long strike." 

And while these two were in full blast in Chicago the following 
occurrence was taking place in New York City, as taken from the 
New York World : 

77 



"November 2, 1910. 
GENERAL STRIKE TYING UP CITY IS IN BALANCE. 



Two Officials of Teamsters Union Are Given the Power to Call 
Off Every Driver in the Greater New York at Any Moment. 



The Longshoremen Pledge Walkout if Aid is Needed. 



ISSUE UP TO MAYOR; POLICE TO LEAVE WAGONS. 



Mr. Gaynor Denies That Threat to Stop Municipal Service Forced 
Promise to Remove Guards From Vehicles. 



Situation in New Jersey City Complicated, and Demand for Militia 

is Likely." 



In the great emergency in Ohio the services of the Ex-Presi- 
dent of two terms and an aspirant for a third (Mr. Roosevelt), has 
been secured to quiet the disturbance and we note what he does 
and says, taken from the morning Herald of the next day : 

(Editorial) 

HEAVEN'S FIRST LAW. 

Colonel Roosevelt touched a popular chord when in a speech 
at Toledo, Ohio, he condemned in strongest terms the rule of the 
mob as well as the injustice of corporations. It is as much the 
duty of the law to put down the one as it is to prevent the other. 
Order is Heaven's first lav/ and that must be maintained at all 
hazards, or chaos results. (But right here let us be permitted to 
inject this important fact that Satan's first law is disorder, strife, 
and hatred, and since the abolition of the slavery which was accord- 
ing to God's plan, and the continual eft^ort of capital to substitute 
an abominable slavery which is contrary to and in violation of God's 
plan and laws, Satan has the say and he is very certain to keep it 
despite the very best efforts of Mr. Roosevelt, or any other man, 
just simply because "The love of money is the root of all evil," and 
it is beyond the power of man to counterbalance and regulate and 
reconcile capital and labor as thoroughly, completely, and wisely, 
as God in His providence had done before the abolition of slavery, 
whereby, in His wisdom he had made the love of money and the 
power of capital a potent force to elevate the most degraded and 



benighted and helpless, heathenish humanity to a higher and more 
civilized and Christianized condition. But now, despite the most 
strenuous efforts of the wisest and best statesmanship, so long as 
the "Love of money is the root of all evil" there will be a continual 
strife between capital and labor, an irreconcilable struggle. So long 
as capital has a potent influence in control of government there will 
be a constant, uncontrollable tendency to a God-forbidden, wicked,^ 
enslavement, or worse still, a heartless serfdom which is controlled 
by the supreme idea of obtaining the greatest amount of labor for 
the smallest amount of money with an utter disregard for the source 
from whence the labor comes. On the other hand, if labor gets an 
over-powering control of government you have just as uncon- 
trollable tendency to communism and final anarchy. Satan has got 
the world between these two horns of the dilemma — choose ye which 
ye will take. I know which it will be — a perpetual and bitter strug- 
gle between capital and labor, and who is to be the judge as to the 
real wrongs. 

To show a crop of tares which is being gathered, I copy this 
from the headlines of the Morning Herald, a daily paper: 

"STRIKING RIOTERS ARE SCATTERED BY THE OHIO 

MILITIA. 



CLUBS USED BY THE SOLDIERS ON CROWDS. 



No Mercy is Shown and a Deputy Mistaken for a Loiterer is Hurt.' 



Columbus Car is Blown up and the Trouble is on. 



Wounded Trampled Under Foot as Officers Force Mob Back. 



Seventy-five Persons are Held at Police Station Following Attempt 

to Dynamite a Car. 



And then the headlines from the Leader, evening paper of the 
same day: 

"BATTLE WITH RIOTERS. 



Missiles Hurled From Residences at Minions of Law, Many Arrests 

Expected." 



Now, what does all this mean? Simply this; that despite 
all the wisdom of man and the best of statesmanship that 

79 



can be devised, the machinery of Government has "jumped a cog" 
in the State of Ohio, and there is great destruction of life and prop- 
erty, and altogether a serious disturbance which is hard to rectify, 
and by the time you get this righted up to run smooth in Ohio, it is 
very liable to do the same thing in Chicago, or St. Louis, or Pitts- 
burg, or anywhere that a strife arises with more or less destruction 
of life and property and with a constant increase of bitter hate — an 
interminable conflict between capital and labor brought on by 
Satan's tares — "The love of money is still the root of all evil." 

"Canton, O., Feb. 10. — More than 200,000 miners in Eastern 
Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, and parts of West Virginia, may be 
called out on a sympathy strike, as a result of the failure of the 
miners and operators of Sub-District Five of District Six to reach 
an agreement on wage differences here. 

"International President Lewis of the miners, announced in the 
conference this evening that the International Executive Board had 
ruled that unless the operators of this sub-district agreed to the 
miners' demands a general strike would be declared in all of the 
mines in which these same operators hold interests. Twenty-four 
coal companies, principally those with headquarters in Pittsburg 
and Cleveland, are included in this. 

"The miners of the Northern half of Sub-District Five have 
been on a strike for months, and the fifth conference ended today 
in a failure to adjust differences. There are 3,500 in the Northern 
half of this sub-district. President Cassingham, of the Eastern 
Ohio Operators' Association, pronounced Lewis' statement a bluff 
and said it was merely political play." 

ANOTHER BIG EXPRESS STRIKE. 

"New York, March 3. — Three Hundred Drivers and Helpers of 
the U. S. Express Company in Jersey City struck today, alleging 
discrimination by the company against men who participated in the 
big strike last fall. No wagons were sent out and business in the 
Jersey City headquarters was at a standstill. 

"The strike later spread to this city, and no wagons were sent 
out from the companies' stables in either city. The trouble leading 
to the walkout arose over the appointment of a driver who had been 
three years in the company's service to the position of driver of a 
money wagon. The men contend that the appointment was due a 
driver who had been in the service twenty years." 

For the purpose of setting forth the labor party's side of this 
question, we reprint what we conceive to be a strong, though par- 

80 



tisan, view of their case. These strike notices above given at ran- 
dom, are only a few of a great number that might be selected from 
the daily papers, which are seldom without similar notices of more 
or less magnitude. And all of this is strong testimony of the bitter 
and ever-increasing animosity which exists between Capital and 
Labor, and which is utterly irreconcilable. 

We reproduce this from "THE COMMONER," and it repro- 
duces it from Lewis F. Post's paper, "THE PUBLIC," as follows: 

"A STRIKING PICTURE FROM THE WORKINGMAN'S 
VIEWPOINT. 

In a recent number of The Public (Louis F. Post's paper), a 
striking article written by Thornton West, was published. The 
Commoner reproduces this article in full. It follows : 

AS WORKINGMEN MUST SEE IT. 

"Are there two kinds of law in the United States — one for the 
rich and one for the poor man? Are the petty thief and the poor 
criminal to be promptly and adequately punished while the rich 
thief and the powerful criminal go unpunished, save for an occa- 
sional fine during the stress of aroused public opinion? Are mem- 
bers of organized labor to be prosecuted for capital crimes on 
dubious testimony, while rich and powerful mine ov/ners can bribe 
legislatures, can appoint governors, and state supreme court judges 
can openly, defiantly, and violently trample under foot state and 
federal laws, and with the aid of governor and militia — the latter 
confessedly in the pay of the mine owners — suspend the writ of 
habeas corpus, nullify all civil law, depose civil officers, deport citi- 
zens, suppress newspapers, destroy property, and create 'lawful' 
anarchy — with absolute impunity and without even a pretense of 
prosecution by state or federal authority? 

"From the viewpoint of organized labor and its sympathizers, 
those questions constituted the real issue in the Boise trial. This 
fact explains the deep and widespread suspicion and the expressed 
bitterness against "the state" — that is, the prosecution in the Boisq 
trial, and the denunciation of President Roosevelt for his untimely 
and unfortunate classification of the three accused men as 'unde- 
sirable citizens.' 

"It is 'dangerous' and 'unpatriotic' to minimize the revelations 
of the trial at Boise. Yet the labor troubles in Colorado and Idaho 
are different only in degree from what happened in the street rail- 

81 



way strike at San Francisco; from what happened in the Home- 
stead tragedy; in the anthracite coal mining strikes; in the railway 
union strike at Chicago, and a hundred other strikes of less impres- 
sion on the public memory. 

"On the part of organized labor, what is the meaning of this 
unmistakable lack of faith in law and government, of this too ready 
resort to primitive and barbaric methods to obtain justice as its 
members see it? On the part of organized capital, what is the 
meaning of this generally insidious, but when necessary, flagrant 
and defiant violation and usurpation of law and government? Sure- 
ly it is not merely a contention between employers and employes as 
to whether or not wages shall be temporarily increased or reduced. 
"Is not the present attitude of organized capital and of organized 
labor the outgrowth of a different method of doing business on a 
large scale, of a different spirit in industrial and commercial enter- 
prises — the different method and the different spirit being the 
product of the marvelous growth of corporations, especially of 
trusts? 

"Professedly, a trust is formed to reduce the cost of production 
and to establish and to maintain prices that will be just and fair to 
consumer and producer alike. In reality, a trust is formed to crush 
out competition, to control the supply of the raw material and of 
the finished product, to reduce wages, to make the price of the 
product as high as the public will stand, and to limit the disburse- 
ment of profits to as few persons as is practicable — in short, to prey 
on the necessities of the people, to subordinate humanity to money. 

"Are not the violence of labor troubles in the last twenty-five 
years, and the most universal and unanimous condemnation of the 
high-handed methods of railroads and all other monopolistic cor- 
porations — are not these an expression of a profound popular dis- 
content caused by the glaring injustice of special privilege on the 
one side, and of constantly lessening industrial opportunity on the 
other? 

"Is not President Roosevelt's wonderful popularity due to the 
fact that he has called a halt on the abuse of corporate power, and 
has demanded at least the regulation of few special privileges? 

"Are not the bitterness of organized labor and the strong popu- 
lar feeling against monopolistic corporations potent proof that the 
world old struggle is now being waged in this country more openly 
and more fiercely than ever before — the struggle between those who 
earn without getting, and those who get without earning? 

"Do not the masses of the American people plainly see that 
now, as never before in our history, all men are not equal before 

83 



the law? It is universal knowledge that the officers of three of the 
largest insurance companies in the world used trust funds for 
speculative purposes, opened their treasuries to the devotees of 
'high finance,' to the Wall Street sheep-shearers — all for greed, 
for private gain. Not even one offender has been punished. 

"The few men that autocratically control the railroads of the 
country have brazenly violated law and equity, have treated the 
public with defiant insolence, and have maintained lobbies to cor- 
rupt state legislatures and congress. Yet the railroads owe their 
very existence to special privileges granted by the people; and 
every dollar used to build, to equip, and to operate the roads has 
been furnished by the people, directly, or indirectly. 

"These same railroad autocrats have 'won' hundreds of millions 
of dollars by juggling railroad stock in Wall Street, while the 
service and the equipment of the roads were not capable of handling 
the freight offered them. There is no record of any stock manipula- 
tor or railroad president being punished. 

" 'Watering Stock' is a favorite pastime of 'high finance.' 
Watering stock is but another name for stealing ; it is taking money 
and giving nothing for it. Yet it places a heavy secret tax on the 
American people and their prosperity. All of these hundreds of 
millions of fiat stock must pay dividends, and the American people 
will do the paying in the name of legitimate earnings, but in fact 
for extortionate charges. A small group of men dealing in public 
utilities and domestic necessaries, have made hundreds of millions 
by v/atering stock. No stock-waterer, no dealer in fictitious prop- 
erty, has yet seen the inside of a prison, by operation of law. 

"The prices of nearly all the necessaries and commodities of 
life are arbitrarily fixed by trusts. As a trust means no competition 
— absolute control of the supply — the American people have no 
other course open to them than to submit to being 'lawfully robbed.' 
Notwithstanding this hold-up method of making money, the trust 
magnate continues to be an eminently respectable and exemplary 
citizen. 

"The American people have been plucked of hundreds of mil- 
lions of dollars by means of the 'Dingley Bill,' a protective tariff 
law passed by a pre-election bribed congress, in consideration of 
the munificent contributions in the first McKinley-Bryan campaign 
— a bargain and sale that has no parallel in history for its audacity 
in deliberately taxing all the people for the benefit of the few. 

"After 'swollen fortunes' had been taken from the pockets of 
the people, the 'Dingley Bill' promoters and beneficiaries formed 
trusts, created monopolies, and wound up by issuing hundreds of 

83 



millions of stock without adding a dollar to the actual value of the 
plants. 

"By the judicious use of a small percentage of this special 
privilege tax, the 'protective' tariff beneficiaries have been success- 
ful, up to date, in keeping congress in a 'stand-pat' attitude, and a 
special taxation of all the people for the benefit of the few still goes 
industriously and merrily on. 

"There is no more bitter sarcasm nor mocking humor than the 
tariff beneficiaries' plea that the 'protective' tariff is for the benefit 
and protection of the American workingman. It is true that the 
American workingman has wrested from employers higher wages 
than ever before; but this is through the efforts and the sacrifices 
of organized labor. It is true that he is better fed, better clothed, 
and better housed than those of his own class in other countries; 
but he is a much more valuable and competent workman than the 
foreign wage laborer. 

"Nevertheless the American workingman is worried, and he 
has been led to do some thinking and investigating; first, because 
14,000,000 girls and women in the. United States find it necessary 
to labor; second, because his share of 'unprecedented prosperity' 
does not abide with him, but is taken from him by the greatly in- 
creased cost of living — the tariff — protected trusts being the largest 
beneficiaries of this increased cost. 

"He sees that there are two distinct classes of citizens — the 
producing class and the exploiting class. He sees the shining 
lights of 'high finance,' of stock watering, of public franchise hucks- 
tering, of special privilege, and of graft of all kinds and degrees, 
lined up in the front ranks of the exploiting class — the class that 
has added nothing to the nation's happiness or to its material wel- 
fare, but that has debauched private and public morals at home and 
has disgraced the nation abroad. 

"He sees the stock jugglers, the stock-waterers, the trust mag- 
nates, the tariff-tax beneficiaries, the special privilege recipients, 
parading their evidence of unlimited wealth. He sees them con- 
tributing with princely liberality to churches, to libraries, to col- 
leges — to popularize and to perpetuate the present system of pro- 
tective tariff, trusts, and 'high finance.' He sees them with their 
villas and their castles at home and abroad, their public post-offices 
within their private grounds, their private cars, their yachts, their 
banks, their railroads, their newspapers, their lobbies in and out of 
the legislatures and congress. He sees them on intimate terms with 
law-makers and federal judges, even hobnobbing with royalty. He 

84 



sees all this, and he feels that he pays a large part of the toll, very 
much against his will. 

"He is not envious of the so-called plutocrats because they 
have 'lots of money;' but he is convinced that lots of their money 
is other people's money, for which they gave no value and to which 
they have no moral right. 

"He has learned that if he steals $50.00 he goes to the peniten- 
tiary; but that the man who steals millions is admitted into 'high 
finance' and is heralded as a foremost American. He has found that 
if he violates the injunction of a court he goes to jail, and his home 
is sold to pay the court's cost; but what when the corporation 
magnate violates an injunction, he gives bond and goes free. 

"He has learned that when a corporation is the complainant, 
federal judges are not only prompt to assume jurisdiction, but only 
too often they assume also the spirit of the prosecutor. He sees the 
leading business men of the country placing pride of pelf above 
pride of self. He sees them proclaiming and exemplifying the 
heresy that the dollar is the standard of success, and that this suc- 
cess is the standard of character, of worth. 

"He hears himself patronizingly asked to accept 'a full dinner 
pail' in lieu of a full share of civic rights and full opportunities in 
life. He has discovered that the devotees of 'high finance' have two 
systems of arithmetic. When they buy they estimate the cost of 
labor, material and machinery, by the formula of 2 and 2 make 4; 
but when they capitalize to sell stocks and bonds, it is 2 and 2 
make 22. 

"He is told by the railroads that the rails made and sold by the 
steel trust at exorbitant, protective tariff prices, are defective, and 
are continually breaking, thus causing railroad wrecks, and daily 
and hourly endangering the lives of thousands of people ; and he is 
told by the railroads that the tariff-protected steel trust monopoly 
turns out these defective rails so as to save money — the money going 
to pay dividends on hundreds of millions of watered stock. But no 
one in authority has ever suggested that the steel trust rail-makers 
are criminally responsible. 

"The government itself tells him the railroads, congressmen, 
senators, and men of large wealth have conspired to defraud the 
people of thousands of acres of valuable mining and timber lands, 
but he sees one of these very senators at the head of the prosecution 
of the mine union leaders of Colorado. 

"He sees corporation lawyers appointed to federal judgeships. 
He sees cabinet officers go direct from the administration to become 
intimately associated with Wall Street leaders of 'high finance.' 

85 



"He has been given ample evidence that even the United States 
Senate, the highest law-making body of the nation — and the body 
that confirms the appointments of all federal judges — is controlled, 
when necessary, by senators elected to represent railroad trusts, 
tariff-beneficiaries, and other special privilege recipients." 

There might be an interminable number of strikes reported as 
they occur from day to day, and are in full blast now as I write, as 
well as other articles and writings similar to this very forcible one 
from Mr. L. F. Post, all of which make a continuous flow of testi- 
mony to substantiate and fortify the facts, sentiments and views set 
forth in this Dead Issue, as well as the Live one. But as to the 
strikes I will insert only one more, and that of a very unique kind, as 
it is simply a strike up side down and "tuther end" foremost, as 
follows : 

"LOCK-OUT of 130,000 Cotton Spinners Declared by Federa- 
tion of Masters at Manchester, England. 700 Mills are Closed. 
Manchester, England, Oct. 1. — The Federation of Master Cotton 
Spinners to-day declared a lock-out of one hundred and thirty 
thousand operatives and closed the doors of seven hundred mills 
owned by its members." 

We see that this strike was declared by a Federation of Masters 
at Manchester, England, and shut down on 130,000 laborers; and 
now what does this little press dispatch of less than ten lines mean? 
There might be a column written from this text. It tells how many 
laborers, but how many women and children were involved will 
never be known except to Infinite Wisdom, whose recording angel 
has every one recorded and the hairs of each head are all numbered 
and known unto Him. 

Can we interpret what this "LOCK-OUT" says? Only in part; 
but this much we know — it means if you refuse to do what we say 
and submit to the terms we propose we will starve and freeze you 
and all of your family who cannot get somewhere away from us to 
eak out your existence. And who are these human beings who are 
so oppressed? Were they brought from the jungles of Africa, and 
from their degradation, ignorance and filth, with no clothing to hide 
their nakedness save a breech-clout, or perhaps only a string of 
beads? Oh, no; not one of those. They were all sold for gold to 
the Southern States of America, and after they had been brought up 
by God's Divine plan, from the lowest human degradation to a full 
equality and level with those whom they now heartlessly oppress, 
it became a political necessity with England that these Southern 
slaves whom they had sold for gold should be freed ; and freed from 
what? From a God-given protection and tutilage which had 

86 



brought them up from the "lowest down" and made them the most 
efBcient, satisfactory, and best contented system of labor that the 
world ever possessed (because it was a God-devised system) to be 
turned loose in the world and compelled to compete with their serfs 
or perish. 

But who are these "serfs" that are "LOCKED OUT"? Not one 
of them, to the remotest generation, has descended from the heathen 
from whom by Divine command we were commanded to "get ye 
your slaves." But your own kith and kin, whom God has said, 
"Thou shalt not enslave," much less hold in Satanic serfdom, or 
even "oppress the hireling in his wages." 

In the February number of "Everybody's Magazine" there is 
an article of nearly ten pages written by Mr. Frederic Townsend 
Martin, of whom the editor says as a preface to the article: "An 
American citizen of the world — New York — London — Paris — the 
host of royalty, peerage and aristocracy." Mr. Martin speaks from 
intimate personal knowledge of the "rich." 

And I can safely add that he is giving all of this very valuable 
testimony in favor of my case entirely unawares, and with no 
knowledge of my case and the application of his statements to it. 
His evidence can certainly be taken at its full par value. His theme 
is the "Passing of the Idle Rich" in the February, March and April 
numbers of this valuable magazine, and the articles are not only 
very entertaining but intensely interesting, while they furnish food 
for serious thought and meditation. While all the articles furnish 
indirect testimony, more or less, emphatically in favor of my case, 
I only quote a paragraph here and there as extracts from these 
articles which furnish direct and convincing testimony in support of 
what I have written, and have to write of this Live Issue as well as 
the Dead Issue. 

"Forty years ago, as a boy, I lived in a true American home. 
The atmosphere of that home was still under the vitalizing in- 
fluence of the nation's great struggle for emancipation. Lincoln 
was a saint. We were provincial, to be sure, but there was bliss 
in simplicity and innocence. Morally and intellectually, the life of 
the family and the life of the state were settled. We knew there 
was a God. We were positive as to just what was right and what 
was wrong. The Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Con- 
stitution of the United States, the fact of the assured greatness of 
our country, the power of our religious, political and social ideals 
to save the world — our faith in these was our Rock of Ages. 

"Just how far these fundamentals are now broken and scattered 
I shall not here attempt to say. But it is simply true that the Bible 

87 



is no longer read, that religion has lost its hold, that the constitu- 
tion and laws are trampled upon by the rich and powerful, and are 
no longer held sacred by the poor and weak. Less than half a 
century ago the aristocracy of America worked with its hands, 
labored in its broad fields, ate its bread in the sweat of its brow. 
The cities were small and inconsequential, and the laws of hospi- 
tality far over-balanced the traditions of class. Here and there was 
wealth — but wealth was shackled to the wheels of opportunity." 

If this testimony had been made to order it could not have been 
stronger proof of what has been written in the Dead Issue. Lincoln, 
a saint ! ! The man who inflicted more damage on the negro race 
than any other one man that ever lived, and at the same time ob- 
literated the last barrier left to hinder this interminable strife be- 
tween capital and labor. The Bible never read ! ! Its commands, 
its precepts, its admonitions, all ignored; the only real chart or 
compass for any nation or people thrown overboard and with Satan 
as Commander-in-Chief and Captain of the ship and crew, set sail on 
the tempestuous sea of future time. Where, oh, Vvhere, will we cast 
anchor ! God, in His Infinite Wisdom, knows ! But here is more 
testimony from* the same source and of the same kind : 

"I confess the terrific sweep of industrialism (greed) across this 
land throughout the past half century appals me as I study it from 
records written and unwritten. I cannot go down through the 
crowded tenement sections of our great cities without having it 
borne in upon me that we, as a nation, pay a fearful price in human 
blood and tears for our industrial triumphs. I cannot see the 
poverty, even the degradation, of the wives and children of the 
wage-working class in many cities, without being visited by the 
devastating thought that surely, if the principle of the thing be 
necessary and right, there must be fearful errors somewhere in the 
application of the principle. 

"For the grim fact stands out beyond denial that the men who 
are the workers of the nation, and the women and the children de- 
pendent upon them, are not to-day given the opportunities that are 
their proper birthright in free America; and that, struggle as they 
Avill, save as they may, lift their voices in protest as they dare, they 
cannot obtain from our industrial hierarchy much more than a mere 
living wage. And on the other hand, it is equally true that the wage 
of capital is high, that the class of the idle rich has grown out 
of all proportion, and that it has taken upon itself a power and an 
arrogance unsurpassed in the industrial history of the world." 

He says, "I confess;" is this not States' evidence from an eye 
witness, "I cannot go down through the crowded tenement sections 

88 



of our great cities without being convinced that we pay a fearful 
price in human blood and tears for our industrial triumphs." And 
then he confesses that "He sees the poverty, even the degradation 
of the wives and children of the wage-working class." And these 
are of your own kind and color, ground down as miserable serfs by 
heartless greed, the excessive "love of money — the root of all evil," 
which God in His wisdom had made a shield and protection for the 
most degraded, miserable and "lowest down" humanity, while being 
brought up from degradation in God's appointed way to civiliza- 
tion and to make the best class of labor; and v/hile the most effi- 
cient was the most contented and satisfied labor in this world — well 
clothed, well fed, well protected and well cared for because they 
were the owner's money, and his "love of money" was a protection 
and a comfort. But now the Bible is a closed book, and Satan is 
Commander-in-chief, and he has reversed the program, and any and 
all who are overtaken by adversity of every class and kind, even of 
your own color and kind, are to be ground down and totally de- 
stroyed by the idolatrous worshippers of the "Almighty Dollar." 
Where are we drifting; without chart or compass? There is a stiff 
gale, with the entire horizon dark and ominous ; mutterings from the 
North, the East and the West, with scarcely a lighter hue from the 
South. There are unmistakable mutterings and tokens of a rapidly 
approaching hurricane, with frequent flashes of lightning from the 
East and North and West, New York is partially paralyzed. Ohio 
is not a whit better, and Chicago and all of Illinois in much the 
same condition, v/ith an offer in California of $100,000 reward for 
miscreants who undertook to "fight the devil with fire" and dyna- 
mite. W^here are we drifting? But let us go back and get a little 
more testimony from our witness. Here it is : 

"We can no longer blind ourselves with idle phrases nor drug 
our consciences with the outworn boast that the workingman of 
America is to-day the hig'hest paid artisan in the world. We know 
those lying figures well. Many a time I myself, in personal argu- 
ment, have shown that the American workman receives from one 
and a half to three times as much as his English cousin at the same 
trade ; but Vv^e know now that this means nothing. We are learning, 
instead of envying the American workingman his lot, to pity more 
deeply that English cousin. We are learning, too, that what we 
give our workers in wages we take back from them in the high: • 
cost of necessities, in food, in clothing, in medicine, in insurance, 
in a hundred devious ways all with one tendency — to keep the liv- 
ing margin down." 

89 



And then here is something more specific from the same source 
which is full as strong testimony. 

In the census of 1900, it is shown clearly that the average em- 
ployee in this country produces every year $1200 of wealth, after 
full allowance for the cost of the material he works with and all 
possible running expenses that are paid by his employer. Out of 
this amount of wealth he gets $437. The remainder, $843, goes in- 
to the hands of other men — the capitalist, or the exploiter of labor. 

That money, nearly two-thirds of the wealth produced by the 
men who labor with their hands and heads, goes to pay interests 
and dividends on the securities that represent the increment gather- 
ed by those who sold out, in other days, or who capitalized their 
plants and settled down to draw their sustenance from the labor of 
other men. Hence the idle rich. 

Turn back to the industrial history of the second half of the 
nineteenth century, and you can trace this development in the very 
statistics of industry. For the idle rich are but the outcome of our 
industrial evolution; and the same mighty forces that gave us a 
golden age of American prosperity gave us also the Idle Rich and 
the Serfs of Industry. 

Yes, by Satan's process which impels the "mighty forces" and 
continually makes the rich man richer and the poor man poorer. 
How long can any sane person hope that this process will con- 
tinue to grind down the unfortunate civilized and christianized of 
God's heritage to a condition of degradation no better than that from 
which the negro was brought by God's infinitely wise and merci- 
ful providence from his African jungles. It requires no prophet 
to foretell the speedy result of these "mighty forces" in a conflict 
of indescribable horror. Imagine, if possible, an internal struggle 
with every city divided against itself — with the balloon or flying- 
machine as much in the possession of the labor party as the million- 
aire, and every millionaire's castle a special target for bombs and 
combustibles ; 1000 feet, or more, up in the air by night and by day. 
Oh ! horror of horrors ! And if you turn to Europe or any other 
country in the world you find no asylum where you can find a haven 
of rest. 

The struggle between capital and labor is probably more ad- 
vanced and bitter in France than in any other country, with Britain 
and Germany, in fact all of Europe, in little if any better condi- 
tion than our own country. Let's turn this horrid picture's face to 
the wall, and pray that God in His infinite mercy and His Almighty 
power may avert this world's most dreadful calamity. 

90 



But is this the Armageddon of which much has been written and 
many predictions made? I do not know, but of this I am quite 
certain that since the Divine plan of elevating the "furtherest down" 
grade of ignorant and heathenish humanity to the most satisfactory 
and contented class of labor has been thwarted by Satan's strategy. 
There never can be a permanent settlement made between capital 
and labor so long as "the love of money is the root of all evil," as see 
Rev. 12 : 12 — "Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea foi; 
the devil is come down unto you having great wrath because he 
knoweth that he hath but a short time." Mr. Carnegie has donated 
millions as a peace fund to prevent nations from going to war, and 
he may achieve some success in that undertaking, but this — is to my 
mind a vastly more intricate and dreadful problem, and does not 
appear to have disturbed his mind. But if I see correctly he could 
spend the last dollar of his millions with his most earnest efforts to 
avert and put a quietus on this struggle between capital and labor 
and he would utterly fail because "the daughter of the horse 
leaches," incasible greed can never be quenched, and if he could 
make a bargain with the devil and pay him his price his majesty 
would not comply with his contract. 

There are many thousands of men and families working as day 
laborers in this country, who, but for the abolition of slavery would 
have owned homes and farms and slaves. Does any sane person 
believe that this class of human beings can be made into serfs with- 
out a bloody struggle. They will need be exterminated. They 
cannot be subjugated to serfdom. The persistent efforts of the 
"money-power" has a constant tendency to oppression of labor, and 
there is just as determined resistance on the part of labor to op- 
pression with a constant yearning and longing for amelioration 
on the part of labor, and with these two opposing elements con- 
stantly and energetically at work. 

There is a steady and continual combination and concentration 
of capital, which grows more and yet more powerful, and more 
thoroughly unified, until its power when brought to bear on any- 
thing of sufficient importance to arouse its interest, becomes over- 
Whelming and almost irresistible. And this "money-power," des- 
pite all efforts to prevent, will very soon get control of any party or 
administration which may have charge of our government, and 
when they have this control it is quite an easy matter to manipulate 
all matters of government, as well as commercial and business 
affairs, to make the country prosperous by making the rich man 
richer and the poor man poorer. 

91 



Meantime there is a constantly increasing and rapidly, grow- 
ing combination of labor which as yet has not been sufficiently or- 
ganized and augmented to make its real power practically avail- 
able. But it is plainly to be seen that it is only a question of a 
very short time when this combination of labor will be thoroughly 
organized so that all of its power can be made as available as that 
of capital; then the labor combination will be by great odds more 
powerful and overwhelming — What then? There is abundance of 
convincing evidence accumulating from day to day, and given in 
the papers, to satisfy any discerning mind that it is scarcely possi- 
ble to exaggerate the seriousness of the "Labor Problem." Hobson 
mirates over the yellow peril. But that is thousands of miles away 
while this "Labor Problem" is at our door in every city and in 
every land and in every civilized nation on this earth, and perhaps 
as critical in the United States as in any other country, because 
the labor is, as a rule, better educated here than elsewhere ; and then 
besides the labor has a bettr opportunity to participate in the affairs 
of Government here than elsewhere and is already and becoming 
more and more a political factor, and v/ill very soon become suffi- 
ciently strong and well-organized to contest successfully with the 
"money-pov/er" for government control, and then which horn of 
the dilemna shall we take. The inevitable tendency of the "money- 
power" is to an abominable, insufferable oligarchy while the ten- 
dency of the labor union is just as strong and inevitable to socialism 
or communism and the legitim.ate fruit is anarchy. 

If there is need for more testimony to prove what we state there 
is no lack of it in the daily records of strikes throughout the coun- 
try, and continual strife and struggle betvv'een capital and labor. 

The third and last series of Mr. Martin's articles comprising 
about ten pages, commencing with chapter II, is a continuation of 
just as valuable testimony and corroboration of what I have Vv^ritten 
and have to write as what has been already quoted, but I will refer 
to only a few more of the most impressive statements. He speaks 
of charity and reform as follows : 

"It may be that as it spreads and grows and brings into the 
battle thousands upon thousands of devoted men and women, hun- 
dreds of millions of dollars of hoarded wealth, social reform upon 
social reform, it will act as a check and an offset to the tremendous 
industrial discontent that is spreading over the country. In so far 
as it is a sign that the wealthy men and women of society are really 
throwing their hearts and minds into the mighty problem of adjust- 
ing the relationship between the classes which are so rapidly drift- 
ing apart, it is hopeful. 

92 



"Yes I am obliged to admit that in the majority of cases with 
which I come personally in contact; the charity of my class is at 
present one of two things : it is either simply a fad with little 
genuine spirit of helpfulness behind it; or else it is, as it were, a sop 
to fear. A good many people seem to think that it is up to the rich 
to distribute largess to the poor, whether the poor want it or net. 
They ignore the economics of the matter, if indeed they know 
them. They have come to be afraid of the growing pressure from 
below, and they think that by indiscriminate charity they can 
lessen it. So they give ships of corn to the mass. You remem- 
ber, perhaps, that in the later plutocracy of Rome, after the triumph 
of Sulla, it came to be a regular habit, when frenzied mobs of 
Romans, or would-be Romans, threatened death and ruin to the plu- 
tocrats, for various and sundry men to buy shiploads of corn in 
Egypt and distribute them gratis to the Roman plebs. It is true 
that in all human probability the plutocracy of Rome prolonged its 
life for more than half a century by just such means. If a mob of 
slaves is hungry, and you give them something to eat, they will go 
home and eat it ; and in the meantime, if you happen to be a Roman 
Senator with plenty of money, your hired thugs may be able to find 
the leaders of the delayed revolution and put them beyond any pos- 
sibility of raising further trouble. 

"You forget, when you try the process in America, that the plebs 
of America are not slaves, and that their leaders, of whom there is 
a host, are pretty nearly as well educated, are certainly as shrewd 
and probably as strong, legally, as you are. In Rome the masses 
were a race of parasites who could be fed or crushed as the occas- 
ion demanded. In America, on the contrary, the masses are the 
producing elements of the nation, and you are the parasites. Be- 
tween the cry of the Roman multitude for coin and the demand of 
the working American for wages there is a difference of intensity 
and seriousness as great as that between the humming of a mos- 
B quito and the thunder of an earthquake. 

"High society is becoming a rampant reformer. It will reform 
anything on a moment's notice. It is perfectly amazing, this plague 
of reform, in its variety, in its volume, and in the intensity of earn- 
estness with which it is pushed. 

"It is the same old story. There are too many among the idle 
rich who jump at the first obvious conclusion. They see the strange 
phenomenon that I have noted as arising out of our industrial evo- 
lution, and they say to themselves: 'The nation, indeed, faces 
a crisis. We are in danger of falling. The world should continue 
as it is. It is pleasant to be booted, spurred, and in the saddle. No 

93 



oats for the horse, and we shall be thrown down. The mob must 
be appeased. Feed the hungry and we shall be saved. Cure so- 
ciety of its most evident disorders and the public mind will forget 
the rest.' 

"I challenge any gentleman to instance a single case in history 
where petty reforms and petty charities thrown indiscriminately 
to the mob have ever established any permanent betterment of 
social conditions, or failed to be followed in the end by a terrific 
reckoning. 

"It is true that among the wealthy, many men to-day are honest- 
ly advocating and honestly working for real deep-planted, perma- 
nent reform." 

It is astounding to read a paragraph like the following, signed 
with the name of Andrew Carnegie : 

"Whatever the future may have in store for Labor, the evolu- 
tionist, who sees nothing but certain and steady progress for the 
race, will never attempt to set bounds to its triumph, even to its 
final form of complete and universal industrial cooperation, which 
I hope is some day to be reached." (Socialism.) 

By industrial cooperation Mr. Carnegie explains that he means 
the slow process of selling or giving actual ov/nership of manufac- 
turing industries to the workmen. He claims that he began this 
experiment in this country when the Carnegie Steel Company took 
in, from time to time, forty-odd young partners, none of whom con- 
tributed a penny of money, the company taking their note payable 
only out of profits. 

A dozen other instances could be adduced, beginning with the 
United States Steel Cooperation itself, the giant among the trusts. 
There is no doubt whatever that this reform is spreading." "What 
is more, I believe it is an honest reform, and that most of the men 
who have introduced it into their companies have dohe so from an 
honest belief that it would elevate the workingman and solve in each 
separate instance the most dangerous of the industrial problems 
that confront us. 

In my own mind, knowing the habits of a plutocracy, I cannot 
help doubting whether widespread cooperation between wage 
workers and capital, particularly between the lower orders of the 
wage-workers and the larger masters of capital, would not simply 
afford to dishonest, disreputable, or unprincipled captains of indus- 
try a fuller opportunity than they now enjoy to hold down the wages 
and profits of wage-workers. 

'Wealthy society in America, as everywhere else, is pursued 
by a demon of futility. It does not matter what we do, 

94 



whether we work like other men and women, whether we play like 
normal men, whether we study, whether we idle, whether 
we spend our money on charity and reforms, or throw it away in 
the pursuit of pleasure, whether we study hard and seriously or 
merely regale our minds and appetites with frivolous novels and 
salacious plays — nothing seems real, nothing seems earnest, nothing 
has any result. Too often our lives are empty of anything perma- 
nent, anything honest, anything simple and human. But of all the 
futile things in the world none is more futile than wealth itself. 
Eliminate the necessity for struggle and you remove from money 
all its true value. It becomes either dross, to be thrown away for 
other things better worth while ; or it becomes an idol, a god, the 
very sum and substance of the world's desire. Yes, and it has its 
idolatrous worshippers by the thousands who manifest as much 
fiendish earnestness and zeal as did Jezebel when she was with- 
standing the best efforts of Elijah in favor of her Astaroth, and they 
are certain to meet her fate if they continue to follow her example. 
This is "old-fashioned religion," which he saj'^s is dead v/ith the 
closed Bible as follows : 

"The old-fashioned religion is dead among us, and so one great 
protector of the home is passed and gone. I am not going to dwell 
upon this theme, for it is a beastly thing. I have only mentioned it 
because it is a logical climax to this chapter on futility ; and I regard 
futility as the real nemesis of society. It turns our lives to nothing ; 
it makes of our fairest garden a desert; it robs us in our very cradles, 
of our lives, our liberties, and our happiness. It leaves us groping 
about in a world of shadows, longing for the substance, dreaming 
of realities we never can know, wishing always for change, sighing 
always for worlds that are out of our reach." 

Of all the grim jokes that ever were perpetrated, the grimmest 
of all, in my estimation, is the time-honored coupling of the words 
wealth and happiness in the formal blessing of a new-made bride. 

We have come to the end of the story. The days of the idle 
rich in America are as a tale that is told. To-morrow in this land 
there will be one of two things — either an evolution or a revolution. 
Either by one of those characteristically swift and marvelous 
changes for which the history of our race is noted, the class which 
I represent will again be merged into and assimilated by the body 
of the nation, as it was half a century ago, or we shall stand face to 
face with the forces of anarchy, socialism, trade-unionism, and a 
hundred other cults that either do represent or claim to represent 
the spirit of this mighty people; and we shall reenact in this land 
some of the most terrible tragedies of history. 

95 



I do not believe a middle course is possible. I know, of course, 
that the rank and file of the class I represent is blind and careless. 
I know that many of them, if they read these articles, will lay them 
aside with a smile, calling them hysterical and untrue. Yet I am 
bound to say the things I think, and I can only trust that some few 
at least will be impelled to study facts. 

For the poison of gold, if it has debauched and corrupted 
American Society, if it has brought within our gates new armies of 
parasites, if it has led to a degree of ostentation and of luxury, and 
even of vice and profligacy, comparable with that of the Roman 
Empire under Heliogabalus, has also spread throughout the nation. 
I said in a former chapter that the middle class in America has al- 
most, if not quite, lost its power. One of the most vital reasons 
for that fact is that much of that middle class has become confused 
with the lower fringes of the wealthy class; has learned to ape its 
habits and luxuries ; has come to live with ostentation and display ; 
and has given up its traditional habits of frugality and thrift. 

And hear what a "tremendous" compliment he pays to cur be- 
loved Southland — unawares, and that makes it all the greater — when 
he says almost in so many words that there "still remains in the 
South 7000, yes 70 times 7000, who have never yet bowed the knee 
to Baal, nor to his Ashtaroth either, — the almighty dollar, but still 
cling to the 'old-fashioned religion' with their open Bible, and 
ascribe glory and majesty and dominion and power, to the only 
living and true God 'without beginning of days or ending of years' 
— the same yesterday, to-day and forever; whose Bible is of as much 
import now as it was in the days of Abraham, with whom He made 
His covenant, and on to its last inspired writer." But hear Him again 
"Then what are we going to do about it? I wish I could answer 
the question in one great sweeping generality. Unfortunately, I do 
not believe it can be answered so. I know that the author of 'The 
Trust: Its Book' has found an answer in a Utopian partnership 
between capital and labor. I know that Mr. Carnegie has found the 
answer in cooperation. I know that such skillful writers as Lloyd 
and Wells have solved the riddle by Socialism. I know that many 
thousands of the hardest-thinking, hardest-working citizens of this 
country are pledged already to the doctrine of government owner- 
ship of the sources of wealth. 

"I know that Danton and Robespierre thought that they had 
found it when they sat up the guillotine in Paris. I know that the 
terrorists of Russia have worked out their own solution. I know 
that the Rockefeller Foundation, the Sage Foundation, and a thous- 
and other mighty charities, are intended as an answer. I know 

96 



that Samuel Gompers and John Mitchell think that the extension 
of trade-unionism will solve it. Above all, I know that many of the 
seasoned leaders of the social world believe that it will swiftly solve 
itself. 

"Yet I cannot believe that any one of these solutions is the right 
one. No permanent change in the social structure of this nation 
can be accomplished except by a revolution or by the process of 
evolution at which I have vaguely hinted here and there throughout 
this series." 

What stronger and more irrefutable testimoney can be needed 
than this of what I h?.d written before this was written — that we are 
on a stormy sea without chart or compass, with Satan chief in com- 
mand, with bedlam, and confusion reigning supreme, with thousands 
of remedies presxribed, any one of which will but make confusion 
more confounded. But hear cur excellent witness again as follows : 

"I cannot help but hope, even against the evidence of my own 
ears and eyes, that this plutocracy which to-day threatens the very 
life of the nation, can be passed into American history without an 
epoch-marking revolution. Only, we of the wealthy class have 
many things to learn, and we must learn them faithfully, sitting at 
the feet of the historians. 

"I do not believe that the march of progress in this land is to 
be turned backward. 

"I take for granted that the wiping out of the idle rich is to be 
one of the first steps in a program of national advancement, greater, 
more splendid, and far more universal than any other period of 
advancement and progress in the history of the nation. The idle 
rich are an obstacle in the way, therefore they must be eliminated 
or destroyed. Whether we — all the rich, as a class — are to share 
with them in that destruction depends upon whether or not we, too, 
set ourselves up as an obstacle in the path of the nation's develop- 
ment. 

"As I have said, I can not name a panacea, nor dispose in a few 
rounded paragraphs of the problems that confront us. Personally, 
I am convinced that many measures to which my class is to-day 
unalterably opposed will within the next few years take their places 
as laws upon our statute-books. 

"I do not expect to see a general triumph of pure Socialism. It 
may be that ultimately we shall experiment with government owner- 
ship of railroads and public utilities, but I should look forward with 
terror to any such experiment. It may be that in the remedying of 
the defects of our civilization we as a nation shall be impelled into 
excess of this sort for at least a brief period." 

97 



He takes it for granted that the idle rich are to be wiped out. 
If it will serve as a panacea I can tell him in all candor, and ser- 
iousness as well as sadness that it is my candid opinion that in a 
very short time there will be no idle rich — not one — because they 
will all get busy, very busy, trying to take care of their wealth, and 
find a haven of safety and rest. Does he not admit, and do we not 
all know that for the last forty years the pendulum has been stead- 
ily and continuously swinging on and on to make the rich man 
richer and the poor man poorer until now nine-tenths of the people 
feel a discontent and unrest caused by this oppression, and a large 
majority of these, comprising all the laboring class and the entire 
producing class of our country, and in fact of the civilized world, 
more or less ground down and oppressed by an Oligarchy of un 
scrupulous and tyrannical wealth until the pendulum has at last 
reached the limit of its arch in that direction with the oppressed 
millions in a rage and frenzy of wrath. 

Does any one hope that the wisdom and power of man can con- 
struct a barrier that can stop the pendulum at the central point 
of justice, equity, and righteousness, with Satan in command? If 
that could be done by human power the concussion might jar this 
old world out of its orbit. It will never be done save by the same 
Almighty power and wisdom that adjusted capital and labor aright 
at the first. 

I do not propose to try to grasp this subject which I call the 
"Live Issue" in all its length and breadth, because I realize that it 
is almost an inexaustible theme, and if I can bring it with sufficient 
prominence before the public to have it receive the serious thought 
and consideration which its vital and imperative purport demands 
and thus secure for it the combined and most serious and earnest 
statesmanship and wisdom of this world, I will have fully satisfied 
my fondest hope. 

When we realize that all of the Governments with the mighty 
powers and controlling. influences of this world are working with 
a closed Bible, and with a deaf ear to all of its statutes, admoni- 
tions and warnings, you can look back through history, sacred and 
profane, from the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, on through 
the ages to the present time and find that the same fate has befallen 
every nation that has turned away from and disregarded the laws of 
the Supreme Ruler of Nations. 

King Solomon is referred to as the Wise man in Holy writ as 
well as by the world at large, and he was no doubt one of the great- 
est potentates in the world's history, either ancient or modern; and 
so long as he was guided and controlled by Moses and the Prophets, 

98 



and by Divine inspiration he had a peaceful, prosperous and glor- 
ious reign. But when he departed from this way he at once brought 
adversity and misery not only upon himself and his nation, but on 
his posterity. The great world power of the Roman Empire dis- 
integrated, dissolved and vanished during the "dark ages" from no 
more utter disregard for God's laws and admonitions than now 
prevail. But in that day the use of steam power, electricity, tele- 
phones, and flying machines were unknown, and the developments 
and results which required a half centurj^ or more for accomplish- 
ment then will now require only a few years. 

We see from the papers that an aviator flew from London, Eng- 
land to Paris, France, 250 miles at a speed of about one mile per 
minute. When the Roman empire was in its zenith this journey 
would have required five or eight days, perhaps longer, which was 
performed in about two hours; and this world and all of its affairs 
now progresses at about this increased rate of speed. 

Without going into details as to the condition of England, 
France, Russia or Germany, or any other civilized nation, we can 
say without fear of contradiction, that none are in better condition 
as to this strife between capital and labor than the United States; 
but in all of these, the struggle is continually growing more bitter 
and determined. 

The German government is perhaps at this time the strongest 
and most firmly founded power in Europe. Its foundations were 
laid deep and strong, centuries ago, cemented with blood and iron, 
and knit firmly together for strength and durability ; but if you will 
place your ear to the ground, even there you will hear the deep dull 
rumblings which betoken and give unmistakable evidences of a 
political earthquake, which, when it does come, will be sufficiently 
furious to destroy "Divine Right" along with the money power. 

But to return to our own country, in the affairs of which we are 
more deeply and vitally interested. 

In a speech made before the Indiana Legislature, Samuel Gom- 
pers. President of the American Federation of Labor, declared that, 
"A constructive, progressive, radical labor party must soon enter the 
field of politics against the republican and democratic parties." 

Then to Mr. Bryan's paper, "The Commoner," we are indebted 
for the following: j 

99 



THE GROWTH OF SOCIALISM GIVES EDITORS A CHILL 



Mark This Socialism Movement and Mark it Carefully, Because 
it is a Force That Cannot be Ignored. 



Must be Viewed With Alarm. 



SOCIALISM WILL CONTROL IN FUTURE. 



How the Secret Agents of Socialism are Permanenting the 
Old Parties. 



What Shall We do to be Saved? 



The sudden and enormous growth in the Socialists' vote sent a 
chill through the editorial rooms of the country. Men of money 
are also greatly alarmed lest they find it necessary to cope with this 
'new force' at an early day. 

This widespread alarm is well founded, but the blow these 
gentlemen so greatly fear cannot be avoided by attacking socialism 
or socialists. The remedy is in the application of democratic re- 
forms honestly applied. 

Nothing would so increase the Socialists' vote and transform 
the vote into the strongest force that has ever moved against the 
entrenched forces of special privilege as for the democratic party to 
surrender itself to the representatives of plutocracy. 

A COLORADO CHILL. 

Two years ago the Socialists received the following votes in five 
out of the fifteen instances where they had filed tickets : 

California, 28,000; Connecticut, 5,133; Indiana, 13,476; New 
York, 33,994; Ohio, 33,759; Wisconsin, 28,144. 

That vote was recorded in a presidential year when every avail- 
able convert to the new scheme of political and industrial salvation 
was brought to the polls. 

Last week the Socialist vote in those same sections reached the 
following totals: 

California, 60,000; Connecticut, 12,000; Indiana, 20,000; New 
York, 68,000; Ohio, 50,000; Wisconsin, 60,000. 

And those figures show that in an "off" year the Socialist vote 
had increased ar follows: 

100 



California, 31,856; Connecticut, 6,867; Indiana, 8,524; New 
York, 34,006; Ohio, 16,241; Wisconsin, 31,856,— which gives a total 
increase of the SociaUst vote in these five instances only of 127,350. 

And this increase is not accidental. It is the result of regular 
methodical work. Socialism is presented to men, not in the guise 
of "periodical platform pledges," but as a sweeping, economic phil- 
osophy, as the solution of every kind of known industrial and politi- 
cal problem. It is a faith ; a religion ; a working hypothesis of life ; 
a final, curative treatment that does not waste efforts on results, but 
goes straight to first causes. And socialism seems likely to awaken 
us from our contemptuous indifference only when it holds the bal- 
ance of power in congress and its mayors are the chief executives of 
many of our cities. 

And the socialist propaganda is not only working through the 
machinery of the soap-box orators and well-considered pamphlets; 
it has its system of what it calls "permeation," and its ingenious 
agents are working with rare diplomacy in the councils of both the 
"old" parties. These "permeation" agents do not call themselves 
socialists; they make a profession of the ancient political creeds. 
They instigate municipal undertakings that seem innocent of any 
collectivist bearing; but they are, nevertheless, an installment of 
collectivism. They get a "plank" put in this platform of some state 
democracy ; and another "plank" put in that platform of some repub- 
lican state party ; and those "planks" are lauded as sound "reforms" 
by good party men. They have adopted this system of "permea- 
tion" abroad with notable success; they commenced its operation 
here just prior to Mr. Bryan's declaration in favor of National own- 
ership of the interstate railroads. They are keen men who handle 
this phase of the movement, educated, alert, subtle, and they are 
laughing in their sleeves at the easy way in which politicians of the 
old schools are "falling" for the game. They have established sev- 
eral successful daily newspapers. They have a thoroughly organ- 
ized system of publicity ; they are in business, not before each cam- 
paign, but every day of the year ; and we should realize that the time 
has arrived for us to cease from ridicule and to consider carefully 
the breadth and meaning of this propaganda. We are not crying 
"Wolf" where there is no wolf; we are saying, "Mark this socialist 
movement, and mark it carefully because it is a force that cannot 
be ignored." — Denver Times. 

101 



A TEXAS CHILL. 

The Dallas Times-Herald in summing up the results of the 
recent elections has the following to say regarding gains made by 
the Socialists; "Socialism is on the boom. Charles Edward Rus- 
sell, Socialistic nominee for Governor of New York, polled more 
than 75,000 votes. In California the heavy socialistic vote defeated 
the State democratic ticket. Wisconsin Socialists elected a con- 
gressman, came within 300 votes of electing another, sent thirteen 
men to the Wisconsin legislature and captured every office in Mil- 
waukee County. Los Angeles Socialists voted 10,000 strong. A 
socialistic candidate for mayor in the city of Minneapolis ran neck 
and neck with the nominees of the old parties. In Oklahoma the 
socialists polled a heavy vote and captured one county. In 1912 the 
socialist nominees for president will poll more than 1,000,000 votes 
unless all signs fail. In the coming years it is a party to be reckon- 
ed with in the United States." 

Freemont did not receive as many votes as the socialist can- 
didate did at our last election. Yet at the next election Lincoln 
went into the presidential office. It may be that with a united de- 
mocracy we may be blessed with another or possibly two more de- 
mocratic administrations such as President Wilson is now giving 
us, but sooner or later either the money-power or the socialist rad- 
ical labor combination will get control of the government and it 
matters little which of the two as either will bring about equal 
disaster. The money-power appears to have a clear title to all that 
is left of the Republican party — while the Progressive party and the 
Democratic party will both be active bidders for the labor vote and 
as long as this vote can be kept divided between tv/o or three par- 
ties their influence will be limited, but when it consolidates and con- 
trolls its full legitimate strength it will hold the balance of power 
and will therefore be very powerful. Before President Wilson was in 
office six months he displayed his statesmanship and ability by 
quietly settling the most serious and dreadful strike that ever 
threatened our country which if it had materialized with its full 
force would have paralyzed our country from ocean to ocean with 
more serious results than any financial panic could possibly do — 
even if it had not brought bloodshed and Civil War. But he had 
no sooner quieted this threatened calamity in the New England 
States than it broke out only on a smaller scale but with violence 
and bloodshed in Indiana with sufficient force to call forth the entire 
force of State troops to quiet it. Our President as a highly educat- 
ed, very talented and thoroughly equipped statesman is the equal of 

102 



any man who ever filled this office and with excellent judgment he 
has selected a cabinet perhaps equal to any that could be found in 
our country, although of this class their is no scarcity. In his se- 
lection he has as closest to him for Counceller the "Gladstone of 
America," but with all this President Wilson nor any other man 
can never reconcile or put a quietus upon the conflict between 
capital and labor. IT CAN ONLY BE DONE BY THE "KING OF 
KINGS AND JUDGE OF ALL THE EARTH," WHEN HE COMES IN 
HIS GLORY, WHEN THE WICKED IN THEIR TERROR OF 
FRIGHT "SHALL CALL UPON THE ROCKS AND THE MOUN- 
TAINS TO FALL ON THEM TO HIDE THEM FROM THE RATH," 
OF A JUST GOD. THEN, AND NOT UNTIL THEN, WILL THIS 
ISSUE BE SETTLED. 

THE END. 



103 



7 7/V 



>*^y/ 



